


And Then There's Those Other Things

by gala_apples, nubianamy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, BDSM, Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Season/Series 01, Teen Angst, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:05:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nubianamy/pseuds/nubianamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles isn't sure what's going on with himself, but he's definitely clear on one thing: he's not nice, and the things he wants aren't all that nice either. BDSM, angry Sterek, with Toppy!Allison and subby!Scott friendships/relationships/complications (Stallison, Sciles, threesome).  Set during season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Begins at the beginning of season one and proceeds from there, playing off canon to meet my needs, but with a few significant tweaks - particularly the one in which I thought Stiles and Allison needed to be better friends. Heavy quoting from episodes starting with 1x04. The first chapter is light on the sex, but it will absolutely get more graphic later. Warnings in this chapter for vague thoughts about domination and bondage, and sexual conversation.
> 
> Just to be clear, the Sterek in this story does not begin as a particularly loving relationship. There is no nonconsensual anything, but a lot of angst about wanting it. Also, Stiles is not monogamous here, but he's also not completely amoral. He loves his best friend most. So you'll see some Toppy!Allison and some confused!Scott, and polyamorous situations and negotiations, and BDSM situations and negotiations, but no cheating.
> 
> There's a [schmoopy mixtape](http://8tracks.com/nubianamy/and-then-there-s-those-other-things) because I can't help myself, as well as lots of lyrics throughout for inspiration. Gala picks the best music. I'll update the mixtape as we add new songs to the story.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> -amy

 

[ _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5CLmflrwIA_ ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5CLmflrwIA)

_Cigarettes and chocolate milk_  
 _These are just a couple of my cravings_  
 _Everything it seems I like's a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker  
_ _A little bit harmful for me_

 _If I should buy jellybeans_  
 _Have to eat them all in just one sitting_  
 _Everything it seems I like's a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter  
_ _A little bit harmful for me_

 _And then there's those other things_  
 _Which for several reasons we won't mention_  
 _Everything about 'em is a little bit stranger, a little bit harder  
_ _A little bit deadly_

 _It isn't very smart  
_ _Tends to make one part so broken-hearted_

_\- Rufus Wainwright, "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk"_

* * *

When his dad agreed to get him the car sophomore year, he'd probably expected Stiles to repaint it. But Stiles would go so far as to say he adored his powder-blue Jeep. There wasn't anything remotely masculine about the color, it was true, but it was bright and beautiful and stood out in a parking lot, which made it practical. He figured the Jeep part was masculine enough for him, and the rest of the world could just go fuck themselves if they weren't okay with Stiles' car the way it was.

He'd put more money into making the car awesome on the inside than on the outside. Both front seats had comfortable covers. There was a Cody Jamieson bobblehead on the dash, along with a completely contraband police radio underneath, which Stiles was pretty sure his dad knew about. In any case, his dad hadn't yet taken it away from him, so he figured that was as good as permission to listen on it - he knew well enough not to  _say_  anything on an active channel, though he did sometimes talk to the dispatcher at the station. He'd also installed his own sound system, complete with seven speakers arranged to his own particular specifications, though he hadn't bothered with the ridiculous bass that would certainly have gotten him in more trouble than the police radio would have.

Scott's reaction, upon seeing the Jeep for the first time, had been just about what Stiles would have expected from his best friend regarding anything unusual: he'd blinked a couple times, made a face, and said, "Well... okay." Thereafter, he'd accepted it as normal. Now, whenever anybody tried to diss Stiles' car in Scott's range of hearing (which, admittedly, had  _expanded_  recently), Scott would shake his head, look disappointed, and say, "Hey, come on." Which was about as harsh as Scott ever got with anybody.

Scott's kind-of-girlfriend Allison's reaction had been different. Her eyes had lit up, and she'd run her hand over the paint with reverence, like she understood something more primal, more essential about  _the car,_  how it was more than just a ride. It had almost been like she was checking it out, like a guy would do with a girl - or possibly a girl with a guy, although Stiles knew fuck-all about what girls thought about guys. In any case, Allison had nodded approvingly at Stiles.

 _Nice,_  she'd said, and Stiles had known exactly what she meant. She hadn't meant, "It's nice." She'd meant exactly the way Stiles was, with his car, with other people, with the world.

That word,  _nice,_  was a treacherous one for Stiles. His dad sometimes said, "It would be nice, Stiles, if you would..." followed by some unreasonable demand about Stiles being responsible, or honest, or something else Stiles had never been and never would be. A request like that was inevitably a disappointment waiting to happen, which Stiles was pretty sure his dad knew. Stiles never promised he'd follow through on any of those unreasonable things, because although Stiles might lie to his dad all the time, he wasn't going to lie to himself.

He thought about it while driving to school in his car, the sound system jacked up as loud as it could go, the windows rolled down. Stiles thought he knew himself pretty well, and one thing he was certain about, that he could have even articulated to anybody who'd cared to listen, was that he was not  _nice._  He'd always pretty much sucked at being nice.

Scott, on the other hand? Scott was nice. Stiles may have at one point wanted to be Scott, because some things came easy to nice guys, but mostly he was too realistic for that. Trying to be something he wasn't just led to feeling woefully inadequate. Scott got to be the nice guy, and Stiles... well, at his best, Stiles was willing to  _not be_  nice, even if that was kind of isolating. Stiles would rather be himself.

Pausing at the traffic light, Stiles drummed the beat of the music on his steering wheel while he considered examples of how  _not-nice_  he was. Taking Scott out into the field to look for half a dead body, for one. That hadn't been nice. Listening in on his dad's phone calls wasn't nice either. Lying to his dad about Scott not being there definitely wasn't nice, even if his dad did already know his son was a habitual liar. He got that his dad's job was to reinforce the rules, even if he was clear Stiles wasn't going to follow them. Luckily for Stiles, as long as his grades were good (which was easy to maintain), and he didn't break the law too obviously (which was harder), his dad mostly let him alone. He was grateful for that. It made it a lot easier to get away with stuff.

Stiles pulled into the parking lot and wandered into school, where he found Lydia Martin and Jackson Whittemore, leaning against one another with obvious intent to do something very wet and dirty right there in the hallway. He stopped close enough to listen and opened his backpack, watching them out of the corner of his eye, for once appreciating his invisibility.

"You know I don't care about what you think," Lydia was saying, her tone wheedling and disdainful at the same time. Jackson huffed, sounding completely annoyed. Stiles watched Lydia's hand travel down the center of Jackson's tight abs to rest just above his fly. "But whatever you decide, you know what I bring to the table. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not."

 _Lydia Martin..._  Stiles concealed his grin. Whatever it was Lydia brought to the table, Jackson would be a fool to turn it down.

Lydia definitely wasn't nice. At times like these, he could see beneath her obnoxious popular-girl exterior. He could see just how not-nice Lydia was, and it was completely, compellingly awesome. Right at that moment, by manipulating him with sex, Lydia could have made Jackson do whatever she wanted.

 _That's fantastic,_  Stiles wanted to tell her.  _Teach me how to do that. Do it to me._  But Lydia wouldn't have known who Stiles was if he'd stopped her in the hallway and done a naked tango with a bear on roller-skates, so he just kept his not-nice thoughts to himself.

He waved at Scott as he slid into his seat behind him in chemistry. Stiles had to admit Scott was good camouflage (or had been, anyway, before he'd become a freaking werewolf). Having a good-boy best friend made people assume you had a secret good-boy side too. If Stiles had one of those, he hadn't yet found it, but he was willing to keep digging. Sometimes he got away with pretending to be a nerd. His grades were good enough for that, but Stiles had had too many suspensions and office referrals to be a very convincing nerd. The best he thought he could manage was  _undercover operative._ He was lucky enough that both the school nurse and Jody in the main office were on his side, so he often got away with more than he should. He was the Jack Bauer of Beacon Hills High School.

"Homework tonight?" Stiles whispered to Scott, while Mr. Harris' back was turned.

Scott shook his head. "Date with Allison."

Stiles shrugged. Allison was turning out to be too awesome for Stiles to hate, even if she did occupy way too much of Scott's free time. He figured Scott deserved to have that goofy-stupid look on his face, the one he got whenever he talked about her. Allison had accepted Stiles' place in Scott's life as best friend without question, and that made her an automatic ally, but Stiles could tell there was more than that going on. He suspected she  _got_  him in a way that Scott, being the nice guy, never would.

It made Stiles want to do something to reach out to Allison, to let her know he  _got her_  in return. He did enough snooping to find out what classes she was struggling in. Then he waited until just before a quiz to casually suggest during lunch, "I could use a study-buddy for econ."

She regarded him, wrinkling her nose. "You? Aren't you acing that class?"

"I would be, if Finstock didn't put me to sleep. Can I copy your notes? Come on, I don't want to ruin my average just because I was slacking one day." He gave her the cutest please-please look he could manage, and she laughed and agreed.

He gave her a ride to the coffee shop after school. Allison didn't even complain about the volume level of his car's sound system, and she sang along to  _This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race_ as loud as he did.

"Scott should probably be here, too," Stiles ventured to suggest, watching Allison for reactions. "He can use all the help he can get, in most of his classes."

She just shrugged. "Scott's probably better off on his own. When I'm around, we don't get a lot of actual studying done."

Stiles snorted, expecting her to laugh or blush, but she just grinned wickedly at him. It was enough points in her favor to make him feel safe. "Yeah, well, that's not the worst thing that could happen to Scott. He deserves a little happy. He's pretty simple in that way. I honestly think all he really wants is to love somebody and have them love him back."

Allison gave him a quizzical smile. "Isn't that all anybody wants?"

He blew out a breath, chuckling. "Well. I would say some people want... different things."

"Cryptic," she said, turning back to her notebook.

"You really want more details?"

She shrugged, looking coy. "You offering them?"

Stiles felt a little reckless, talking to a girl he barely knew this way - and his best friend's kind-of girlfriend, at that - but Stiles also wasn't one to pull punches, for any reason, ever. "Hypothetically speaking, I'm not much like Scott."

"No," she agreed. She tapped her pencil. "That's okay, though."

"Why, thank you." He beamed, giving her the full-force Stilinski smile, and she laughed, and things felt so easy and comfortable that they actually studied economics for the next twenty minutes, talking about the material at a level Stiles rarely encountered from anybody, opportunity cost and productivity and scarcity. It was awesome.

When he dropped her off at home afterward, Allison said, "We should do this again. It was helpful."

"Yeah," he said. "Definitely."

So it seemed Allison was a friend. At least he had one person who got him. Most of the time, though, he was alone, and that was okay. There were too many things happening in Stiles' head for him to feel comfortable talking about them with Scott, or anybody else for that matter.

Most mornings he woke up with a whole host of not-nice feelings. Some of them were about girls and some of them were about guys and none of that really bothered him very much, but the fact was, none of it was actually going to  _happen._ He was stuck thinking about it. This was frustrating, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Stiles was all right with having an active fantasy life, but it was damned distracting.

The night after they first ran into Derek Hale in the woods, for example, Stiles had a dream. It was vivid enough to still be alive in his memory by the time he got to his next study session with Allison. When she noticed, she frowned thoughtfully and asked, "What's on your mind?"

He was too involved with the dream to come up with an adequate cover story. "A lot of TMI," he said. "Usual teenage boy stuff." That wasn't precisely true, but it was a lie he told often, so it didn't take any effort to tell it now.

"Anything you want to talk about?"

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "It's not really the kind of thing you talk about with - girls."  _Or anybody._

But Allison just said, very casually, "Try me." And Stiles had looked at her for a long time, turning the request over and over in his mind, before responding.

"Sometimes there's - things. Things I want. That aren't very... you know."

"I do?"

He sighed. "Not very  _nice._  Things that aren't  _nice."_

Allison nodded slowly. "You want... those things." She paused. "What kind of -?"

"People making me do things," he said. The words felt foreign on his tongue. They were words he'd never said out loud before, even though in his dream the ideas had been more than clear.  _Derek Hale, kneeling over me in the dry leaves, holding me down on the ground, wearing nothing but that leather jacket._  The things Derek had made him do weren't nice at all, but they'd sure made him come hard within minutes of waking.

Stiles stared at his chemistry book and waited for the inevitable fallout, the comments of  _Stiles, that's creepy,_  or  _Stiles, it would be nice if you would just act normal for a change._  But Allison wasn't saying anything. Eventually he looked up.

"It's okay, Stiles," she said quietly. "There's nothing wrong with you for wanting that."

He wanted to throw something. He wanted to cry. He wanted to yell completely inappropriate things at Allison, demanding how dare she dig things up that had hitherto been buried. He managed to swallow all of that and nod, his throat dry, and say, "Sure."

She didn't bring it up much, but after that, it did feel better. It was easier, knowing she  _knew,_ that  _somebody_  knew, even if there were still things he wasn't going to tell her.

(For one thing, Stiles was pretty sure he couldn't talk to Allison about the first time he'd tried to tell Scott he might be a werewolf, even if he didn't mention the werewolf part.)

That day, when Stiles had tried to get Scott to cancel his date with Allison - because nobody raised Scott's pulse like Allison - Scott had totally freaked out and thrown Stiles against the wall. And when he'd calmed down, he'd apologized, said he was sorry, because he was a nice guy even if he was a freaking werewolf.

Stiles wasn't going to tell him what he'd really been thinking, which was  _I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to throw me against that wall again._

Because Scott was a nice guy who wasn't at all into other guys. Discovering that being thrown against the wall by his best friend really did it for Stiles was a discouraging thing, but it was only one among a whole series of discouraging things regarding what Stiles really wanted, so it was okay. Stiles wasn't going to make this one a big deal.

Focusing on lacrosse helped. Scott was suddenly so much better at lacrosse that it was scary, but Stiles helped Scott deal with that as much as he could. Sometimes Scott got out of control and tried to kill him, which was not at all sexy, but Stiles helped Scott with the werewolf stuff anyway - because, as it happened, Stiles  _really got_ the idea of how your emotions and desires could totally rule you, how they could drive you to do crazy, frightening things. Granted, he didn't really  _want_  to be in charge of Scott, but if his best friend needed that sometimes, he could step up and provide it.

It came to Stiles, in the middle of another study session, exactly how to solve that problem. Luckily, this one was at Allison's house instead of the coffee shop, which made it easier because he didn't have to worry about other people hearing him talk about sensitive topics.

Stiles threw his pen down and sat up straight, staring at Allison. "You," he said.

"Me," she responded, unperturbed.

"Scott," he said.

Allison cocked her head, grinning. "Is this, like, Mouseketeer roll call?"

"I'm just waiting for my mouth to catch up with my brain. Okay, so... you know how Scott gets overwhelmed sometimes? How you help him calm down." She nodded, and he went on, feeling unaccountably relieved. "Yeah, so... you actually  _do_  that. Help him calm down."

"... Yeah," she said, looking perplexed.

Stiles flopped back onto Allison's bed. "God, that's so  _great._  I really love the guy, but that kind of stuff, I'm really  _bad_  at it, you know? If I'm going to do anything, it's rile Scott up, not calm him down."

"I could see that happening, sure." She considered him. "You don't want to tell  _him_  what to do."

"No," Stiles said emphatically. "That would be one of those on-pain-of-death things, right up there with having family dinner with his grandparents and taking out the garbage."

"You take out Scott's garbage?"

"Only when his mom bribes me with dessert." He pointed at her. "But  _you_  could tell him what to do. He'd listen to you."

She gave him a funny look. "I don't understand."

"Never mind." It would be so much easier if they could just tell Allison everything, about Scott being a werewolf, and about all the weird stuff happening in Beacon Hills. Allison might be one of the ordinary people, but she was cool. He was pretty sure she'd deal with it, someday - but he wasn't going to take that risk at the moment. "Just, sometimes, when he's stressed out, he needs somebody to handle him. That somebody so far has been me, but it'd be so much better if he could get it from somebody who's good at that sort of thing. Somebody who doesn't mind being -" He paused on the words  _the alpha._  "In charge."

"Yeah, I guess I don't mind that." She grinned. "Sometimes it's fun."

Stiles left that conversation there. He didn't mind TMI, not in the way that Scott did, with the squirming and the embarrassment. Stiles was too curious for that. But he was also willing to let Allison tell him whatever she wanted to in her own good time.

* * *

Stiles' dream about Derek subsided eventually, to be replaced by more familiar ones. His familiar dreams often featured Lydia, but they also frequently starred special guests doing not-nice things to him, some of whom weren't even appealing to him in an ordinary context. But Stiles had learned years ago not to put too much stock in his dreams. He thought of them as a combination pressure valve and creative writing assignments: when his body needed something, his brain would come up with several possible solutions, many of which he would never, ever actually want to do.

He thought that particular dream had been excised entirely - until the night when Stiles watched over videochat as Derek Hale appeared behind Scott in his bedroom. He could do nothing but sit there helplessly as Derek grabbed Scott and threw him against the wall, growling threats into his ear. In addition to the fear that rose up in his throat like bile, Stiles had to choke back the selfish jealousy that rose up along with it.

"Fuck," he whimpered. Then he clutched his screen, shouting, "Scott? Scott, what's going on? I mean - I see what's going on, but - Scott, just tell me you're not dead. Or eaten. Preferably not either?"

In the ten seconds that passed between Derek's appearance and Stiles' decision that there was no way he could make it to Scott's house in time to do anything useful, Derek was gone, and Scott was taking a shaky seat back in front of the computer, looking terrified. "I'm - I'm okay. I'm fine."

"God, Scott, isn't there a way to keep crazy monsters out of your room? Garlic, or something?"

"That's vampires, Stiles," Scott said dully. "I don't think I can keep Derek Hale out of my room if he wants to come in."

 _Really don't want to think about that._ Stiles disconnected the connection, gritted his teeth, ignored his arousal and focused all his attention on learning everything he could about werewolf prevention lore before he fell asleep. If there was anything Stiles  _could_ do for Scott, it was to put his obnoxious memory to work on Scott behalf.

Unfortunately, no amount of research cramming was going to blot out the images once he was actually asleep. Stiles woke up near dawn with his dick in his hand and Derek's name on his lips, and coming like that wasn't a pleasant feeling at all.

"He's probably a murderer," he muttered as he cleaned himself up. But apparently believing that didn't make him any less hot. Stiles tried to redirect his own traitorous brain back to more gentle thoughts of pain and control, but his brain was having none of it. His brain knew exactly what it wanted, and there was nothing nice about it.

He was tense enough following the lacrosse game and Derek's arrest that he brought it up with Allison at their study session. Obliquely, of course; he couldn't exactly say,  _so Derek Hale broke into your boyfriend's bedroom the other night._  He couldn't talk about the half-wolf-girl they'd dug up in Derek's yard, either.

"When my dad arrested Derek Hale." Stiles twiddled his pencil. "I talked to him. In the back of his police cruiser. Through the wire screen," he added, watching Allison's eyes widen.

"Jesus, Stiles, talk about risky?"

"Maybe." He glanced up at her, then back to his book. "He does kind of scare the shit out of me. I told him he didn't, but..."

"No doubt," she agreed. "So what made you do that, anyway?"

 _Beats me._  He wanted to laugh, but he was pretty sure it would come out hysterical at this point. He flexed his hands. "I had questions. He has answers. But he's definitely not giving them up."

She nudged his ankle. "You're not the police officer in your family, you know."

"Sometimes the only way I can get answers is to go after them myself. Turns out that dead girl, she was Derek's sister."

"No way." Allison stared at him. "You really think he killed his own -"

"I don't know. I don't know! He's just... he's dangerous. That's all I'm sure about."

She nodded slowly. "And sometimes dangerous is hard to resist."

Stiles shrugged as noncommittally as he could manage, but his heart was beating double time. "It doesn't matter."

"Stiles, if it didn't matter, you wouldn't have bothered confronting him in the back of a police cruiser."

He grinned weakly. "Yeah, that's... that's what Derek said. Wondered why I was bothering with him when I should be worried about -" He swallowed on Scott's name. "More important stuff."

"The most important stuff never gets talked about." Allison gave him a decisive nod. "I think that was brave, what you did."

That actually made Stiles a little embarrassed, but he covered it with a leer. "Talk about brave. Scott, kissing you in the locker room after the game? Completely adorable. That was a real Snow White moment. Freaking birds landing on your shoulder and shit."

She shook her head, smiling. "I thought for a while I was going to have to make the first move, but I talked him into doing it eventually. He said I make him nervous."

" _You_  sure as hell weren't scared."

"Of Scott?" Her smile widened. "Definitely not. He's a puppy."

Stiles' dream came back the next night, in startling clarity, in which he was Scott, being grabbed and shoved against the wall. He had enjoyed watching Scott and Allison being happy together, and maybe he'd stared a little while they kissed, but that wasn't the image that had stuck with him, that had followed him from bed to car to class and made it hard to do anything other than  _want_  things.

Stiles, feeling a little desperate, managed to corner Danny Mahealani by his locker while he was doing something from which he couldn't reasonably escape. He asked, very quickly and very quietly, "So what does it mean when you keep having the same dream about a really awful guy?"

"Stiles," Danny exhaled, closing his eyes, "do we really have to -"

"Yes, because when I tried to tell Scott, he told me  _never give that much detail again,_  and I'm not quite ready to talk to Allison about this. Probably not ready. Pretty soon ready. So does it mean my subconscious is talking to me and I should listen to it, or does it mean my hormones are freaking nuts?"

He glared at Stiles. "Yes. Both. I have no idea. Why are you asking me?"

"Because you're my resident expert on gay? Danny, come on, I'll never ask you anything again." He tried the cute please-please look on him, but Danny just slammed his locker and walked away. It was a little disappointing; apparently the look didn't have the same effect on everybody.

He finally gave up trying to spare Allison his TMI and grabbed her at lunch, positioning her to stand next to him in line for tater tots. "Okay, you were right."

"Of course I was," she said blithely. "... About what, exactly?"

"Sometimes dangerous _is_  hard to resist. I just..." He sighed. "I feel like a complete idiot for not resisting harder."

Allison's eyebrows were somewhere up by her hairline. "Stiles, I've known you for less than a month and I can already tell that you are really, really bad at resisting. Anyway, you're not actually  _doing_  any... anything, are you? You're just thinking about it?"

"That is the sad story of this sophomore's life," he agreed. "So, what, it's more moral if I'm not actually doing it, just thinking about doing it?"

"You're asking me?" She shrugged. "Maybe? I don't think there's any harm in thinking about anything. You get to decide if it's okay to go for it or not."

Stiles stared at her.  _"Go for it?_  I'm not going to be doing any  _going_  for anything, trust me. For one thing, he's a freaking w- uhh, w...asshole. Yeah. Wasshole."

"Yeah, and I think as Lydia can attest, there are plenty of people who'll put up with assholes if they're pretty enough. Jackson definitely qualifies." Allison's eyes ranged across the cafeteria. "Speaking of Lydia, have you seen her?"

The fact that Stiles couldn't immediately conjure up Lydia's exact location made him even more disgusted with himself. Since when had he replaced her in his fantasy queue with a psychopathic mythical creature? He sighed. "No, but if you wait a few minutes, you'll probably find her walking directly away from me."

She gave him a sympathetic shoulder-pat. "Don't worry, Stiles. I'm still firmly in the  _there's nothing wrong with you_  camp."

Stiles wasn't at all sure that was true when, later that night, he found himself waiting outside the school in his car for Scott to scope out the bus-o'murder. He still felt like the sidekick, even if Scott said he wasn't.

He tapped out the entire chorus to  _I Write Sins Not Tragedies_  on his steering wheel before picking up his cell phone and calling Allison.

"Where are you?" he said.

"At home; where else? There's a curfew." She didn't sound all that worried. "Don't tell me you're not following it."

"Rules and I are only passing acquaintances. We had a falling out a long time ago. Anyway, I'm totally safe." He peered out the windshield at the silent school. "I think. Scott's here."

She snorted. "Scott needs protection as much as you do."

"Only if you're talking about the latex kind." He grinned at Allison's burst of laughter. "Oh, come on, don't tell me you don't have that on the agenda."

"Hell, yes," she giggled. "But I'm letting him set the pace. It's not just about what I want."

"You're negotiating with him about sex?" Stiles considered that. "'Cause, honestly, I don't think he would say no."

"No! No, I mean... I'm just saying, if it's his idea, it's hotter. I'm sure I could get him to do whatever I wanted him to do, but -"

"But that's not what you want. And I get the idea that you pretty much get what you want."

"Pretty much. I should go, Stiles; Lydia's here. Stay safe, okay? In regards to latex or whatever."

He hadn't told Allison about his dream, the one Scott hadn't wanted to hear about, but it was okay. It felt more and more safe every time he danced closer to the truth with her. He was pretty sure by the time he actually got around to saying the words  _Derek Hale terrifies me and gets me off at the same time_ , Allison's reaction would be nothing but a nod and a smirk.

But the next time he saw her, Allison didn't look like she was interested in talking about Stiles' confusing non-love life. When he sat down next to her in Spanish class, she appeared to be chewing on something tough and unpleasant.

"Just because you're a really good liar doesn't mean I shouldn't trust you," she said. "Right?"

Stiles blinked. "I'm... touched. Thanks."

"No, not  _you._  I mean somebody, in general." Allison glanced at him with a wry smile. "But okay, yeah, you fit that profile, but... I'm thinking about somebody else."

"Scott's a terrible liar."

"Agreed. Not Scott. My aunt. She showed up last night with a bunch of nice words for me and a kung-fu death grip on my arm when I reached for her bag." She shook her head. "And a completely fake story about what went wrong with her car."

"So? My dad lies to me all the time." That was actually a lie, but Stiles didn't have any other adults in his life who could be the bad guy. He could make up a not-nice character to suit the conversation.

"But without a reason? No. Something's going on here. I just haven't figured it out yet." She shrugged, slumping into her seat. "Anyway. What were you guys up to last night, anyway? Scott didn't answer his texts."

Stiles was going to have to respond with another lie. Stiles managed to redirect the conversation before Allison could detect his discomfort, but it wasn't easy. Not only was she smart, but she was obviously looking to catch people in a lie, just like Stiles was, pretty much 24-7. While Scott expected the best from people, Stiles wasn't going to expect anything but complete and utter chaos - which is pretty much where he found himself.

 _If Derek's not the alpha,_ he reasoned on his way to history, _then that means he's not the guy who bit Scott. That means, not only is some other werewolf more in charge than Derek is - which is a pretty freaking scary idea - but Derek's not nearly as much of an asshole as he seems to be. Which is even more of a scary idea._

He felt worked up enough to confront Scott with his concerns at the beginning of class, but Scott was too morose about the D- on his paper to be ready to listen.

"No more questions," Scott begged.

"No," Stiles agreed. "No more questions. Not about the alpha, or Derek. Especially Derek. Who still scares me."

It was starting to piss Stiles off that Scott didn't want to hear about what was going on with  _him_ , especially considering Stiles was totally fine with being Scott and Allison's cheerleader. For a best friend, Scott could be awfully squeamish. Stiles spent the rest of the day scowling at the images in his head of Derek grabbing his wrists, Derek kneeling over him, Derek -

Derek in the  _freaking parking lot._  Stiles almost hit him with his Jeep before he screeched to a halt.

"Oh, my  _god,"_  Stiles muttered. For a minute, he actually thought Derek might be another hallucination. Judging by the state Derek was in, things were not going well for him. He looked like he'd been doused in a whole lot of bad news. Stiles leaned on his horn, but it didn't seem like Derek even noticed he was there.  _What's new?_  he thought bitterly.

And then Derek slid to the pavement, and Stiles felt his heart constrict. He thought later that it had partly been because watching Derek do that was a grim reminder of Scott's abiding mortality; even lycanthropy wasn't going to protect him from getting killed. And of course it was damned inconvenient for a werewolf to be passing out on the road in front of his Jeep. But at that moment, as Stiles scrambled for the door handle, all he could feel was blind panic.

Then Stiles heard a thump on his window, and he looked up to see Scott barreling past to kneel beside Derek.

"What are you doing here?" he heard Scott hiss as he approached them.

Derek swallowed. "I've been shot."

"He's not looking so good, dude," Stiles murmured. He shifted from foot to foot, trying to keep his distance, because Derek actually looked  _terrible._  This was taking the whole Robert Pattinson thing to a new, pasty-grey level. Stiles had no idea what he wanted to do, but it definitely involved being far away from there until Derek felt better and could go back to glaring and throwing people against walls with authority.

Scott touched Derek's shoulder, then drew his hand back as though he'd been stung. "Why aren't you healing?"

"I can't." Derek was having trouble catching his breath. "The bullet was different."

"Silver bullet?" Stiles blurted.

Ah,  _there_  was Derek's glare. "No, you idiot."

But Scott was shaking his head. "Wait, wait. That's what she meant when she said you had 48 hours."

Derek gritted his teeth, looking uneasy. "Who said 48 hours?"

"The woman who shot you."

In the midst of honking horns, Stiles watched as Derek blanched, his eyes going ice-blue as he hissed against the pain. He could see the flash of Derek's canines, just past his lips. Stiles stifled a whimper.

"What are you  _doing?"_  Scott demanded. "Stop that!"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you: I  _can't."_  The words were little more than a low growl by this point.

Scott slid his arms under Derek's, hauling him to his feet. He looked imploringly at Stiles. "Help me get him in the car."

But Stiles barely did anything, opening the door and hanging back until Derek was securely in the passenger seat. He could scarcely focus on their murmured conversation. Three cars back, Allison was standing beside her sedan, watching them with concern, but he just shook his head and she stayed where she was. Watching Derek lose control was hard enough; he didn't need to deal with Allison's questions on top of that.

Scott gestured, exasperated, as Stiles climbed into the driver's side. "Get him out of here."

"I hate you for this  _so_  much," Stiles muttered.

His tires screeched on the blacktop as he peeled out of the parking lot. Derek was still and silent on the seat beside him.

"Okay, exactly what in hell are we doing here?" he demanded.

"Trying to keep me alive long enough for Scott to find one of the bullets that injured me." Derek simply sounded exhausted now, as though all the sullen had been leached out of him by the interchange at the school.

"Well, where are we going?"

"I don't care," Derek moaned, squirming on the seat as he gripped his arm. "Just drive. Anywhere."

 _That shouldn't be so hard._  Stiles headed down a random residential street. He tried to keep his foot from jamming down onto the gas pedal. Even with the police radio, he probably didn't want to be caught speeding in his dad's own jurisdiction. He eyed Derek nervously, feeling the tension in his stomach. It wasn't sexy, it was just freaky as all hell, to see Derek in so much pain and not to know what to do.

"Do you need, like, water or anything? There's a fresh bottle in the side door."

Derek's eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. "I'm  _fine."_

"Are you going to shift? Should I be worried about you trying to kill me? Because Scott's done that a couple times, and it was -"

"Stiles!" Derek barked. "Shut. Up."

Stiles tapped out an angry text, ignoring the dirty looks Derek was shooting him.  _Did you find it yet?_  When Scott didn't reply, he sent it again via voice mail.

"Call me back, okay? This isn't working out. He's -" Stiles watched Derek helplessly.  _Dying. He's dying, right here in my car._  "He's pissing me off," he finished.

But he had barely finished the voice mail when Scott's answer to his text came.  _Need more time,_  he read. Stiles tossed the phone down with disgust.

"Try not to bleed out on my seats, okay? We're almost there."

Derek wasn't even looking out the window. "Where?"

"Your house."

His head snapped up. Stiles' eyes were on the road, but for a moment, he thought Derek might actually be scared. "Don't take me to my house! Not when I can't protect myself!"

Stiles pulled over to the side of the road. He was  _done_  with not having the answers, with only knowing part of the story. Whatever stupid fantasies he was having about Derek, this was irritating him more than he was willing to deal with. Derek watched him warily as he put the parking brake on and faced him across the seats.

"What happens if Scott doesn't find your little magic bullet, huh?" He tried to keep Derek's gaze, but it slid away as Derek sat there, his resistance ebbing. "Are you dying?"

"Not yet." Derek took a deep breath. "I have a last resort."

"What do you  _mean?"_  Stiles snapped. "What last resort?"

And then Derek pulled up the sleeve on his shirt, revealing an oozing, gangrenous wound in his arm. The skin around the bullet hole had turned grey, and it was so swollen, Stiles was surprised Derek could fit it through his sleeve. He turned away, feeling sick.

"Oh my god... what is that? Is that contagious? You know what, you should probably just get out."

"Start the car," Derek said, focusing with obvious effort on the dashboard. "Now."

It wasn't the grossness of Derek's gunshot wound that was making it hard to look at him. Stiles just didn't think Derek needed to see the completely inexplicable tears that had sprung up in his eyes. It horrified him to realize how entirely out of control he felt around this jerk. His hands clenched the steering wheel, and he forced his eyes up.

"You know, I don't think you should be barking orders with the way you look... in fact? I think, if I wanted to, I could probably drag your little werewolf ass out there in the middle of the road and leave you for dead."

Derek's arms were trembling, but his gaze on Stiles didn't waver. "Start the car," he said evenly, "or I'm going to rip your throat out. With my teeth."

Stiles had heard people describe moments of extreme importance as though  _time stopped,_  or  _everything slowed down._  This wasn't like that. Stiles simply couldn't move, or speak, or breathe very effectively, because every drop of blood in his body felt like it had immediately rushed from his brain to one other essential organ. He struggled to close his jaw, but even so, it took several seconds and a lot of effort.

Then he figured, if he could do that, he might be able tear his attention off Derek's canines. No, not canines.  _Fangs._  He had  _freaking fangs._  Stiles was not going to allow himself to think about kneeling on the ground before somebody with fangs.

He started the car.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome gala_apples on board as cowriter. She's here to inspire me and to write the snarky dialogue. We get so much more done together than apart, it's not even funny. Lots and lots of quoting from 1x04, gosh I love that episode. Canon be damned, we're going to have fun with this crew. 
> 
> -amy and gala

 

Stiles decided driving around town was only going to get him so far. He had a quarter tank of gas; he could get out of the city a little ways before he'd have to stop for more. Driving might be the only thing that was going to keep him sane. He aimed himself at the onramp for 680 north and tried to breathe.

"You're going to have to deal with me talking at you," Stiles said, more belligerently than he'd meant it to sound. He watched, tense, while Derek turned away, facing the window. "I'm just saying, I don't think I can keep from doing that."

"Whatever," Derek muttered. His skin was even more pasty-white than usual, and his eyes were hooded with pain.

Possibly due to the pain, Derek was blissfully silent as Stiles used the time to go over the concepts they'd started in sociology. It was a decent course, and one that might actually appreciate his going off topic in essays, but it had a metric fuck-ton of lists. The only way he'd make good grades was if he memorised some acronyms. It was almost four when he tried to text Scott again, but it wouldn't go through.

"He turned off his phone. He turned  _off_  his  _phone_." Stiles twisted his grip on the steering wheel. It made the usual plastic squeal that normally made his passengers lightly punch him in the arm and tell him to stop. Derek didn't bother with such niceties. Instead he turned in his seat to really make contact, using his healthy right arm. Honestly, it would serve Derek right if Stiles ground his knuckles into the inevitable bruise and jerked off to it later. For now, he just rubbed the spot resentfully.

"It's a nervous habit. I have them. Everyone has them. I'm sure you have them, and yours involve being a giant dick, right?"

"You've got to develop coping skills when the whole world's out to get you. Or did you not notice that your father tried to arrest me?"

"I can't believe he turned off his phone." Stiles deliberately slowed down to make the guy behind him pass him. He gave him the finger as the guy sped by, leaning on his horn. "The entire point of a phone is to stay in contact! Turning it off defeats the purpose! He's paying  _how_  much a month to all of a sudden ignore me?"

"I'd pay you a thousand dollars a month."

"Ha ha. But no, you can't give me that money. You need to spend it on your thirty identical leather jackets."

Stiles glared at the road, at the speedometer reading 83 mph, at his silent cell phone - anything to distract himself from his persistent arousal, and its relationship to the belligerent creature in the seat beside him. He especially didn't want to think about Derek being able to smell that on him. With any luck, Derek's crisis would keep him from noticing anything.

They made it to San Ramon before Stiles made an executive decision. "I'm getting gas." His Jeep could actually run on fumes for an impressively long time, but he needed a minute to be out of the presence of Derek Hale. It wasn't until he got back into the car that he realized it was only partially due to Derek's effect on him. Derek spotted his wince.

"What?" Derek growled.

"You know that experiment where they stick the frog in hot water and it's like, fuck that, and jumps out, but if they stick a frog in tepid water and slowly heat it, the frog will fucking boil?"

Derek gave him an  _...and your point?_  look that was only slightly thrown by the pallor and the sick-sweat.

"Well, I just got the smell-o-vision version of that. Out there-" Stiles waved vaguely to the gas station, "gas and fresh air. In here? Fucking reeks. You smell really fucking sick, dude."

"I'm fucking dying,  _dude_. I need that bullet."

Stiles watched Derek's hand, gripping tightly at the handle of his door. His knuckles were trembling. Stiles reached across him and made sure the door was locked.

"Yeah, I get that. You made that abundantly clear. But barring Scott pulling his head out of his ass and actually saving the day, is there anything I can do to make you more, I dunno, comfortable? We could go to 7-11 and I'll get you some microwave soup, or a pillow or something?"

Derek was looking at him like he was out of his mind, but Stiles had it on good authority that pillows helped many a problem.

"When I was a kid, my mom was sick. A physical thing, but a mental thing too. It's complicated." And Derek wasn't exactly the guy to share all the ugly details with, anyway. "I wasn't always supposed to see her, because of the mental part of it. My dad was trying to shield me. Basically all that did was teach me how to sneak into rooms without people noticing, and then later the quickest bike route to the hospital, but, you know. Dads." Stiles shook his head. "Anyway, the only thing I could ever really do to help my mom was get her pillows so she could sit up better. If she was in a good mood, she'd act like it was the best thing I'd ever done. We used to have so freakin' many throw pillows. So yeah. If you want to make a quick stop to pick something up, I'll get whatever."

"I'm fine."

Derek's reply was short enough that Stiles had to wonder if he was just trying to get Stiles to stop babbling, or if Derek really thought he  _was_  fine. Stiles couldn't help himself; he grinned.

"What, don't werewolves use pillows? Don't tell me you sleep on the floor."

There was no reply for a long minute. When Stiles looked over at him, Derek looked a little spacy. He risked touching him, just a nudge to his knee, far away from his disgusting leprous arm. Derek took a shuddering breath, coming back to himself.

"What was that?"

"I asked you a question. It doesn't matter." He squinted at Derek, then pulled around a slow-moving truck. "Are you sure you don't want something? A bottle of water?"

"You should stop talking about eating things. Or start driving less like a reckless idiot." Derek leaned his head back, swallowing on a grimace.

"There will be  _no_  puking in this car, you get that? I will leave you on the side of the freaking road, and I don't care if you're dead tomorrow, I will go into the afterlife and hand you a hose and  _make_  you clean my baby out."

"Understood." Derek's sigh was barely audible. "I've always had a strong stomach. My uncle, my cousins, they'd play that game, where you have to do something on a dare, or tell the truth about something about yourself."

"Truth or Dare. Derek Hale played Truth or Dare?" He had to look at him again to make sure Derek wasn't kidding. "And I thought we weren't supposed to talk about eating?"

Stiles wasn't sure if Derek was even listening to him now. "I would always do the dare. Truth can be manipulated way too easily."

"So your cousins, they made you do all kinds of crazy stuff, huh?" Heading back into town, the traffic was much slower. He drummed on the steering wheel impatiently. Sitting in traffic was a lot less satisfying than going fast, even if they were just killing time either way.

"I don't think it was that they made me. It was a way for me to earn some kind of respect in their eyes. There wasn't anything special about me."

"Nothing special," Stiles echoed. That made him want to both laugh and slap Derek upside his stupidly beautiful head.

"I was just another beta. There were too many of us for anybody to care much what I did." Derek rolled his head to the side, focusing with an effort on Stiles. "We did sleep on the floor sometimes. A whole big pile of us. Wolves, you know?"

That was a picture he didn't need in his head, but it was strangely charming. He imagined Derek circling himself, tighter and tighter, before settling down into an impossibly tiny circle before the fire. "You still do that?"

"It's not the same alone." His breathing was coming short. Periodically he'd shift his arm, and each time, a pulse of pain came off him, almost palpable.

"You could tip your seat back. It goes back a little."

That was apparently too confusing for Derek in his current condition, so Stiles reached over him again and shoved the lever on the side to let the seat recline as much as it could. Derek turned his head, facing the window, and closed his eyes, his face suffused with discomfort and annoyance. He didn't move from that spot for a long time.

Stiles tried to stay very quiet, and to keep the road noise to a minimum, for as long as he could. It wasn't easy for him not to talk. It was even harder to keep his eyes off Derek, the way his long limbs stretched out on the plastic seat, the leather of his jacket gaping over the swell of his chest. Derek wasn't watching him. He hauled his eyes back to the road, over and over, telling himself sternly,  _he's a prick. He's a prick, and you have no business getting involved. No matter how appealingly scary he might be._

Derek said words, but they came out muttered and incoherent, and when Stiles tried to respond to them, he didn't say anything back. Stiles had to conclude Derek wasn't talking to him, whatever it was about.

It was getting dark when Derek finally moaned and shifted in his seat. With a gasp, he sat up straight, banging his head on the roof of the jeep. "Fuck!"

"It's a low ceiling," Stiles offered unhelpfully. Derek collected his bearings and focused on Stiles.

"Was I asleep?"

"You were something." He watched Derek rotate his arm very slowly, gritting his teeth. "I really think I should just take you home."

" _No."_  Derek's voice was hoarse, but emphatic. "That would be the worst thing you could do."

Stiles figured it was time for another attempt. He pulled out his phone and sent a text to Scott informing him that Derek didn't look so good. It was an uncomfortable seven minutes before Scott got back to him.

_5:44 - Stuck at dinner with Allison's family. Need more time._

Stiles couldn't help but throw his arms into the air, briefly brushing his knuckles on the roof of his jeep. "My best friend, folks."

"What?" Derek asked tersely.

"It's been almost three hours. He's literally the worst breaker-inner I've ever seen. I could have been in and out of there seventeen times by now."

"He doesn't have it yet?"

"Don't you think I'd be pedal to the metalling it so you could do your thing together if he had?" And Stiles was seriously starting to wish that Scott had it.  _Really_  wish. He'd wanted it before, so he could stop doing this chauffeuring busywork bullshit and get on with his day. But now he wanted it for Derek. The wolf was starting to look seriously fucked up. Stiles had the uncomfortable feeling that if Derek took his jacket off again the arm would be green or some other ungodly colour, not just red and swollen.

"I'm going to have to stop for gas soon."

"Again?"

"Well, pardon Betsy for not running long on the change I had from lunch." Which,  _fuck._  "I'm going to have to put it on the emergency card. Which my dad scrutinizes like it's a parolee with a long history of recidivism." Stiles rubbed his hands over his face. "Scott's so gonna owe me for this."

The next thing Stiles knew, something was hitting him in the side of the head. Stiles swerved hard, half-convinced that Derek's arm had exploded and he had fleshy little chunks all over his cheek. Then Derek's hand was on the wheel, stopping him from driving into a ditch. The left hand, attached to his gross shot-at arm, so there went that theory. Stiles had never been more happy to be proven wrong.

"What the hell?" Derek asked. His voice had a hint of a pant in it.

"What the hell _you_?" Stiles volleyed. Relieving lack of gore or not, his heart was still going a million miles an hour because Derek had thrown something at him.

"Use the cash. Don't get in trouble."

Stiles realized it was a wallet that had fallen onto his thigh. He focused on it, then picked it up and thumbed through it, pulling out a couple twenties before handing it back to Derek. Stiles wasn't going to argue with Derek about giving him money, but other than his dad, he'd never had anybody pay him for anything. It felt a little weird.

It wa past seven when Scott finally called. Unfortunately he had nothing to say that couldn't be said in a text message proclaiming his freakin' uselessness.

"I'm just about done with this, man." Stiles was a master manipulator, but if he couldn't press upon Scott the utter shittiness of this situation he'd have to hang his hat up altogether. "I'm hungry, I've almost run out of gas twice, I've missed the time I usually do a dinner run with dad, and Derek, just so you know, hasn't been granted a miracle by God."

"I'm sorry, I'm trying," Scott hissed. "They have a weapon company; there are bullets everywhere. And they keep staring at me. I think Mr Argent wants to kill me, and he doesn't even know what I am."

"What am I supposed to do with him?" said Stiles, gritting his teeth.

"Take him somewhere! Anywhere!"

Stiles was basically the best guy ever for not pointing out that the last four hours of his life had been a fucking pointless roadtrip to  _anywhere_. That didn't mean he was done complaining. "By the way, he's starting to smell. Like death."

"Okay... take him to the animal clinic."

Stiles paused. The fuck kind of solution was that? "What about your boss?"

"He's gone by now. There's a spare key in the box behind the dumpster."

He heaved an enormous sigh and handed the phone to Derek. "You won't believe where he's asking me to take you."

Derek put the phone to his ear. "Did you find it?" He listened, controlling his labored breathing. "Look, if you don't find it, I'm dead, alright? Think about this: the Alpha calls you out against your will. He's going to do it again. Next time, you either kill with him, or get you killed. So if you want to stay alive, you need me. Find the bullet."

He thumbed off the phone, letting his hand slump to his lap, and leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes.

"That's, uh... some mighty fine threatening you're doing."

Derek didn't bother to open his eyes to answer. "It's all I have energy for right now. And it works."

"For flexible values of the word  _works,_  maybe. What are you trying to do, anyway?"

"Keep Scott alive." He winced, flexing his arm. "And me, too. Let's get going."

Stiles wanted to quiz Derek on exactly why he cared so much about keeping Scott alive in the first place, but that sounded like a pretty assholeish thing to say, considering  _he_  was Scott's best friend. He should be the one doing everything he could to keep Scott alive. Instead, he was following Derek around. It gave him a funny twinge to think about Scott being in danger; he wondered if that twinge was his conscience. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt it, otherwise.

Getting off the highway meant driving over some more bumpy roads and potholes, and each one made Derek grumble and whine. None of it sounded like the kind of thing Stiles could chide him for. He'd never been in that much pain, himself.

Pulling into the parking lot of the veterinary clinic, Stiles put the jeep in park and ran around to the other side to help Derek out, only the door was still locked. He had to go back to the driver's side, climb over Derek to unlock the door, and then back around yet again to half-drag, half-walk him to the building.

When Stiles lifted the latch on the loading door, Derek pushed past Stiles, practically collapsing on top of a bag of hamster pellets. He was obviously completely exhausted, and they'd only walked a hundred feet from the car. Stiles tried to remind himself he had no choice about this, that there was nothing else he could be doing, and Derek was strong enough to survive it.  _Maybe._

Stiles' phone went off with another text. After reading the few words Scott had sent, he turned on Derek. "Does Nordic blue monkshood mean anything to you?"

"It's a rare form of wolfsbane." Derek rolled his head against the wall, hands wrapped around to grasp his own elbows. "He has to bring me the bullet."

"Why?"

Derek blinked up at Stiles, moving slowly, as though even that expression cost him some vital energy. "Because I'm going to die without it."

Stiles felt his mouth open, and let it stay agape as he ran the bullshit meter he was constantly testing people with (because everyone lied, after all, it was human nature) and came up depressingly low. Derek was serious. He'd used the word  _dying_  at least half a dozen times over the last few hours, but this time it felt real. The Nordic Blue wasn't giving Derek some sort of nasty STD, or wolf gangrene. It was honest to god killing him, and if Derek's deterioration was any measure, Scott's overhearing of 48 hours was off by a long shot.

Derek dying would be bad. Very bad. Scott needed Derek to get the strange Alpha off his back. Scott would be stuck between a boulder and an extremely hard place if Derek died. Fuck, he would probably end up killing someone. And while Stiles had a broad enough viewpoint to take circumstances into account, the law didn't, and neither did Scott. Scott didn't deserve anything like death. Scott was  _nice._

"Okay." He buzzed them into the clinic, watching Derek pull his shirt over his head with a sense of unreality, and wondered exactly what he'd have to do or know in order to get permission to touch the skin of his back. The triple spiral tattoo in the center was like a target. Stiles restrained his own hand as he dragged his gaze back to the ruin of Derek's arm. "You know, that really doesn't look like anything a little echinacea and a good night's sleep couldn't take care of..."

Derek was barely maintaining his balance at this point, his words thready and indistinct. "If the infection reaches my heart, it'll kill me."

"Positivity just isn't in your vocabulary, is it?"

He was rummaging through cupboards with determination, but his voice was almost inaudible. "If he doesn't get here with the bullet in time... last resort."

"Which is?"

Derek let out a sigh of relief, or possibly resignation, as he held up the thing he'd discovered in the cupboard. It appeared to be some kind of a saw. It was sharp and scary-looking and made Stiles blanch - but not as much as the words that Derek said next.

"You're going to cut off my arm."

Derek slid the saw across the table. Stiles picked it up and gripped it tightly, staring at it. It wasn't unfamiliar to him to feel horrified and turned on by something at the same time, but it might have been the first time it had been in regards to an object. He pressed the trigger, feeling the vibration of the motor, and let it slip from his fingers to the table. "Oh my god."

Meanwhile, Derek was wrapping a rubber band around his upper arm, tying it off with his teeth to make a tourniquet. Each image, every angle of Derek's bare torso was burned into Stiles' mind. He knew he'd be sorting through them later in his mind, like personalized pornography. He ran a hand over his mouth, feeling his own presence of mind slipping away as he abandoned control.

"What if you bleed to death?" Stiles pleaded.

"It'll heal, if it works."

That wasn't enough of an incentive for Stiles. He swallowed. "I... I don't know if I can do this."

Derek's voice was muffled by the rubber band as he tugged it tighter. "Why not?" His voice was a dozen times stronger than it had been only a minute ago. Apparently Derek was the kind of man who could not be deterred from a plan, even if that plan was awful. Which was horribly, inexplicably  _hot._  A man who didn't see obstacles or listen to  _no_  was sexy - fuck, how was this all so sexy? Stiles was going to wind up this with a complex, he just knew it.

"Well," Stiles said, his voice cracking, "because the cutting through the flesh, the sawing of the bone, and especially the  _blood."_

"You faint at the sight of blood?" Derek sounded derisive. It made Stiles bristle.

"No, but I might at the sight of a chopped-off  _arm._ "

Derek rolled his eyes. Stiles almost wanted to apologize. He felt bad for resisting, because Derek clearly needed somebody who could follow through here, but - he swallowed.  _Arm._  Derek's  _arm._  He wanted to run his fingers over it and whimper.

"Okay," Derek said, sounding reasonable. "How about this? Either you cut off my arm, or I'm going to cut off your head."

"You know, I'm  _so_  not buying your threats anymore -" Derek grasped his shirt collar and hauled him toward him, across the table, until he was hovering inches away from Stiles' face. Stiles could feel the heat of his labored breathing on his skin, could see the way Derek was looking at his throat. It wasn't like he was hungry. It was just that he was absolutely telling the freaking truth. He really would take off Stiles' head. Stiles averted his eyes, trying to control his flaming cheeks. "- okay, okay, bought, sold, totally, I'll do it."

Derek lurched away from him, his body contorting, and moments later he was vomiting black, noxious liquid onto the floor of the clinic. Stiles flinched, grimacing.

"Holy god, what the hell is  _that?"_

"It's my body," Derek gasped, "trying to heal itself."

He tried not to gag. "Well, it's not doing a very good job of it."

Derek turned his head, looking up at Stiles in supplication for just a moment before dropping his forehead to the steel examining table. "Now. You've got to do it now."

Stiles stared at Derek's arm, trying to figure out how he'd gotten here from this morning. This morning he'd had ordinary thoughts about ordinary things. Maybe they'd been a little out of the ordinary, but they  _definitely_  did not include the prospect of slicing through living flesh. "Okay, honestly, I really don't think I can -"

"Just  _do it,"_  Derek roared, and even in his condition, even this low on energy, the command in his voice spurred Stiles forward with a fresh wave of stimulation.

"- oh my god, okay, okay." With both hands, he positioned the saw against the arm below the tourniquet, leveling it in his mind to balance the brutal act he was about to do with the good will of why he was doing it.

"Stiles?"

That was Scott's voice, not quite in the room yet, but definitely entering the building. "Scott?"

Scott emerged from the hallway, took in the scene with one glance, and demanded, "What the hell are you  _doing?"_

Air exploded out of Stiles' mouth, a weak chuckle tacked on the end. "You just prevented a lifetime of nightmares." Because Scott had. Stiles  _was r_ elieved. In fact, that was the only emotion he was going to name, relief. There wasn't the slightest bit of disappointment at his curiosity being unquenched. Because that would be  _wrong_  and Stiles had to think he wasn't that broken.

"Did you get it?" Derek asked.

Scott dug in his pocket and handed over the bullet. Derek held it up, his eyes barely able to focus. Stiles could only regard him uneasily.

"What are you going to do with it?"

The answer was lost as Derek slumped forward across the examining table and slid to the floor. Scott was immediately behind him, no doubt scrambling for the bullet that had been dropped, but Stiles was more concerned with the passed-out werewolf. He knelt over Derek, feeling the panic overtake him now, even though all afternoon he'd been calm. It was too immediate, too crucial for him to identify why.

"Derek!" He slapped his face a few times, to no response. "Derek come on, wake up. Scott? What the hell are we going to do?"

"I dunno! I can't reach it."

"He's not waking up!"  _Fuck,_ the person had said forty-eight hours, it hadn't been forty-eight hours. He wasn't supposed to  _care_  about this. "I think he's dying. I think he's dead!"

"Just hold on!"

Stiles didn't really envision himself holding on much longer. He was seriously about to lose his fucking shit. Scott was whispering to himself, Stiles couldn't really hear the words over the rush in his ears, but if Scott didn't produce a fucking miracle in the next ten seconds Stiles was going to grab him by the shoulders and shake the shit out of him.

"I got it, I got it!"

"Please don't kill me for this." With all the lacrosse- and puberty-induced strength his right arm could muster, Stiles took a deep breath, wound up, and punched Derek Hale full in the face. Pain exploded all the way up to his shoulder, and he shook his hand, wincing - but it had done the trick, Derek was awake and blinking and sitting up. They helped him to his feet while Scott handed him the bullet.

Now it was back to Derek again, but he seemed to know what to do. Derek bit off the end of the bullet, dumping the powdered herb onto the table, and lit it with a lighter from the pocket of his jeans. Stiles had to wonder,  _do werewolves smoke?_  but this one apparently had no trouble inhaling the fumes that rose up.

Derek pushed the ash into the bullet hole with his index finger and immediately fell to the floor, screaming. He started to thrust his pelvis up and up, his cries overlain with snarls, and Stiles was going to  _hell_ because there was something in it that made him lick his lips.

And then the wolfsbane did its thing, swallowing up the black sludge under Derek's skin like a flickering firework. Within seconds, the bullet hole had disappeared.

"That... was  _awesome_." Stiles fistpumped, because holy fuck, magic. "Yes!"

Scott was staring at him. Unsurprisingly, Scott's first impression of events was not how great it was. "Are you okay?"

"Except for the agonizing pain," Derek replied, dragging himself to his feet. He already looked stronger, though his pallor hadn't subsided.

"I'm guessing the ability to use sarcasm is a sign of good health."

Stiles almost bit back his retort as Derek turned the full force of his healthy glare on him. God, yes, that still worked just as well as it had before he'd been shot, and no, the adrenaline high wasn't helping. Stiles leaned on the examining table with one hand.

"Okay, we saved your life. Now you're gonna leave us alone," Scott attempted to barter. It took a lot to not demand that he speak for himself. There were whole regions of Stiles' body that didn't want to be left alone by Derek. "And if you don't, I'm gonna go back to Allison's dad. I'm gonna tell him everything-"

"You're gonna trust them? You think they can help you?"

"Why not?" Scott scoffed. "They're a lot freaking nicer than you are."

Derek just looked at him, shaking his head. "Yeah, I can show you exactly how  _nice_  they are."

Stiles agreed to take Scott and Derek back to Derek's car so they could go investigate whatever wasn't so nice about what Allison's family had done, but honestly, he didn't need to hear it. He already knew Allison was more like him than like Scott. She didn't need to be nice to be awesome. He watched them drive away, still holding on to his relief like a life preserver, and made his shaky, tentative way home to his own house.

His dad was working late, and the house was dark. That was fine. All Stiles could do was shed his clothes onto the floor and crawl under the covers, shaking with reaction and desperate confusion. He waited, curled into a ball against his pillow, for a long while before sleep overtook him.

_Both hands had been fastened securely to the bed. Derek wasn't in pain now, and his arms were completely whole and perfect again, but Stiles wasn't paying attention to his arms. All his focus was on the object between his legs, putting pressure on the taut, pulsing skin of his perineum. "You feel that?" Derek asked him, and Stiles most definitely did, felt the cold metal of the handle waiting there while Derek slid fingers inside him, slick and firm. "You used it on me. Now I'm going to use it on you. Ready?" Stiles had no idea if he was ready or not, but the sound of the revving motor made him catch his breath as much as the feeling of the object vibrating against him. There was no reason he should be this turned on._

It wasn't until he sat up in bed that he realized what object was making the sound of the motor, in his dream. It was the bone saw from the veterinary clinic.

Nine times out of ten Stiles dealt with messed-up dreams by shaking the screen saver off his computer and getting lost in links on Wikipedia or Cracked. Rarely, he went to find his dad, or called dispatch if his dad was working, or talked to Scott. With what he'd just experienced, though, none of those options were open to him. He'd end up kink-shaming the fuck out of himself if he googled anything he'd dreamed. Scott had made it abundantly clear that he didn't want to hear about Stiles' fantasies. And while he was sure there were some students at Beacon Hills who had baldly TMI relationships with their parents, that wasn't the way it was between him and his dad. Hell, Coach Finstock probably knew more about his sexual interests than his dad did.

But he couldn't just go back to sleep. His heart was racing, feeling one hysterical laugh away from a panic attack. Rolling back over and crashing was not an option. Before he realized what he was doing, his phone was in his hands and he was dialing the only person who had shown any inkling of understanding.

The phone rang twice before Allison picked up. "Scott?"

"Um, no? I'm calling you from my number, right?" Stiles pulled the phone away from his face to check. It was an Xperia, so it was definitely his.

"Yeah, no, sorry. I was just expecting him to call me back, and I figured he might be hanging out with you."

"Nope, I said goodnight to him already. All by my lonesome. Just me and my thoughts. Which, uh, is actually the problem, as it turns out." He rolled over to his back, staring up at the ceiling.

"What's going on, Stiles?" Now Allison sounded concerned.

He ran through several scenarios in his head, none of which would have felt possible or even desirable before the day he'd just had. Now, with this particular set of images added to his arsenal -  _Derek Hale writhing on the ground in agony -_  he should be all set for some brand-new fantasies to surface. But the crippling shame he felt at the dream he'd just had eliminated all his doubts about what was safe to say to Allison Argent. Even so, he opened his mouth to answer and had to swallow twice before he could get the words out.

"I had a dream about Derek. About Derek doing things to me. With... things. It was awful."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I liked it." He closed his eyes, seeing the images branded on the surface of his memory. "I liked it a lot. Fuck."

"Stiles, it's okay."

"It's not okay at  _all._  Derek Hale is horrible. He's mean. He hits people constantly, which is one of those hot-in-fantasy, abuse-in-real-life things. He doesn't listen to anyone, ever, which would be fine if it was just a normal conversation, since that's the way half the school acts towards me, but even freshmen know about safewords and I really don't think he'd stop, which is another bad real life thing. And he's a criminal, I don't care that he got exonerated -" Stiles really didn't. So what if it was actually an Alpha that bit Scott, Stiles trusted his dad, and his dad's Bad Guy radar had pinged at Derek, so Derek had probably done something, somewhere. "Lack of proof does not necessarily mean innocent. And he definitely smokes, I saw his lighter, I cannot like someone stupid enough to want to get cancer. Plus he's like thirty, which means it's illegal, and my dad would murder me. And I'm not even talking about the gay thing, I really don't want to talk about the gay thing, because as soon as I do Scott's gonna do the  _'but you don't like me right? heh heh heh'_  thing that straight best friends have to do, and there is no safe way to answer that question. But I'm not talking about Scott, I'm talking about  _Derek._ I really shouldn't be wanting someone like  _him."_  He could feel his own panic rising with his voice, burning his throat like bile.

"Stiles." Allison was managing to hang on to her calm, and it was helping him stay tethered to something resembling calm, too. "Can you give up on judging yourself for one minute?"

"I don't know. I don't  _know."_  He was this close to reaching for the bottle of Ativan in the drawer next to his bed. "This is so fucked up."

"All right, if you can't be kind to yourself, can you follow directions?"

He sat in the dark, crouched in a ball, listening to his own breathing. "I don't know," he said again. "Maybe."

"Can you come over here?"

That made him blink. "Over - where?"

"To my house. Get out of bed and drive over here. Park around the back, near the kitchen door, and I'll let you in."

Stiles found himself swinging his feet over the edge of the bed, reaching for his t-shirt. "I - yeah, yeah, I can do that."

He'd been a grisly chauffeur all day, but the way Allison was telling him to get back in his car, somehow it didn't feel nearly so bad. She stayed on the phone with him while he drove, talking to him in soothing tones about the unfortunate dinner she'd had with Scott and her family. By the time he parked his car, he was laughing.

She reached in through the open door of Stiles's jeep and took both of his hands, tugging him into the brightly lit doorway of her kitchen. Stiles didn't exactly collapse into her arms, but he did let her hug him, trying not to cling too hard, and the way she rested her soft cheek against his neck made him quiver a little.

"You came over when I told you to," she said softly.

"Well, yeah." He tried to sit back and look at her, but she held him securely, not letting him out of her arms.

"I feel like I should be weirded out by that, but... I think I'm not going to be." She rested a hand on the back of his head, and he relaxed a fraction more. "C'mon."

Stiles didn't even pay attention to the labyrinth of hallways, or the fact that there was a back staircase leading up from the kitchen to the second floor. He could feel the energy leaking out of himself with every step, reducing himself to exhaustion. It was all he could do to keep walking after her. Before he knew what was happening, she was pulling him down onto her bed.

"Uh," he managed, "this - I don't think this would be okay. If I were calling the shots."

"We're not doing anything weird here, Stiles. You need to calm down."

Allison's hug wasn't any more amorous than the one in the kitchen had been, but lying on a bed snuggling with a girl, especially one as admittedly hot as Allison, was going to have an effect. Allison either didn't notice or didn't say anything. She sighed in what sounded a lot like contentment.

"Better?" she asked eventually.

"Better," he had to admit.

She sat up with him on the edge of the bed, holding his hand. "Just because you want something with Derek, or anybody, doesn't mean you have to do something about it."

He nodded, feeling too comforted to be glum. "I'm not very good at  _not_  doing things I want to do."

"Well," she said, and squeezed his hand, "maybe I can help with that."

She took him down the same way they'd come, but when they rounded the staircase to the kitchen, there was a woman sitting at the table waiting for them. Allison stopped, keeping Stiles behind her. It wasn't enough to shield him from the woman's eyes, but it felt a little like she was trying to protect him.

"I thought I heard more footsteps from more than two feet," said the woman. "You need a condom for him too? Or is this the afterglow?"

"Auntie Kate, don't..." Allison's voice sounded harder than Stiles would have guessed. Like she was about to tell Kate off for being rude, instead of begging her to not tell her parents.

Kate held both her hands out. "That wasn't me being a bitch. Have sex with twenty guys in a night if you want. I don't care, it's your body. Okay, I might care if your dad finds out, because he'll have a heart attack and die. But do what you want, safely. I just gotta know if I need to make a drugstore run for you."

Allison smiled pointedly. "I know where Walgreens is too. But thanks. Goodnight."

Kate smirked a little, but got up and disappeared down another corridor, leaving them alone again. Stiles watched Allison, but she didn't seem all that upset.

"Do I want to know why you and Scott needed a condom earlier?" he asked, trying to make it into a joke, but it didn't sound very convincing. She grinned anyway.

"I think I won't kiss and tell. He's your best friend, after all. He'll tell you, won't he?"

"Uh,  _no."_  He let her guide him out to his jeep. "I never get details from Scott. He just gets that faraway look in his eyes, like he's singing Disney songs to himself in his head."

"Well, let's see what happens in the morning. I should at least check with him before I spill the beans about him dry-humping me for an hour and a half." She waited while he put his seat belt on. "Whoops, did I say that?"

Stiles held the steering wheel firmly, trying to let go of her hand. "If I need to - if I can't -"

"You can text me, but don't make any more trips over here tonight. My dad would seriously ground me for a month." She leaned into the car and placed a quick kiss on his cheek. "Unless you bring coffee."

* * *

_http://youtu.be/pDE8GpzWNQg_

_I figured out the grade of this collapse  
_ _The compass doesn't lie when it's holdin' me  
_ _I'd love a little faith with this afternoon  
_ _Give the sun a bomb when it's comin' down_

_Walkin' through the shame of this relapse  
_ _The mirror doesn't lie when it's scolding me  
_ _I'd love a little faith with this afternoon  
_ _And come quickly..._

_Oh, I know  
_ _I'm holding on  
_ _I'm holding on to a ghost  
_ _I know  
_ _I'm tangled up  
_ _I'm tangled up in your robes  
_ _I know  
_ _I'm skippin' work  
_ _I'm skippin' work like a stone  
_ _I know  
_ _It's ok I'm not a-ok right now_

_\- Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker, "N/a OK"_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of quoting from 1x05 and 1x06 in this chapter and the next. Lots. Sorry, it was all so applicable, we couldn't ignore it. Also, lots of UST among various people.
> 
> -amy & gala

 

Sometimes Stiles felt like the hallways of Beacon Hills High were populated with random extras from a teen drama. He never spoke to any of them, and they didn't give him the time of day. They were just the substrate in which he and Scott existed from day to day. He didn't mind, mostly, and it had been his reality for so long, it didn't occur to him to feel lonely.

Which is why it was so startling when Allison started saying hello to him. It happened all of a sudden: one day his universe had one friend in it, and the next, it had two. And, by an even weirder six-degrees rule, Stiles just as suddenly had connections to Lydia Martin, Jackson Whittemore and Danny Mahealani.

Jackson was obviously particularly annoyed by this, and sneered at Stiles when he passed him in the hallway. Even the sneer was surprising, because before Stiles had been invisible, beyond any kind of notice. Now, he might be getting negative attention, but Stiles had learned long ago that negative attention was way, way better than no attention.

Today, however, there was no sign of Scott, nor of Allison. This meant that Stiles regressed down the number line of popularity, back into negative numbers. It was an incredibly lonely situation. Not to mention he really wanted to talk about what he and his dad had seen the night before at the video store. He couldn't talk to Jackson, because Jackson had been the one freaking out. He really wanted to talk to  _Allison,_  Allison and Scott, and they were nowhere to be seen. Scott wasn't even answering his texts.

First period was chemistry, and Mr Harris was talking crap again. Stiles was actually fairly sure that the guy had gotten his teaching degree online, because while he clearly understood his subject, his skills at making it understandable were hella subpar. Also he was a freakin' dick. This time the lecture was something about the Parent-Teacher interviews, which every student was already aware of, duh. Either you sucked at a subject and you got to tag along while your teacher complained about how crap you were, or you were good enough to not get on the shit list, but then you had to sit at home and wonder what everyone was saying about you behind your back.

Stiles was on the second list in all six classes, of course. Scott, on the other hand, was going to get verbally punched in the face by Mr Harris, Mr Renard, and Mrs Ballowitz, at a bare minimum. Scott was definitely failing chemistry, and Stiles knew for a fact he had D's in the other two classes.

The minute Jackson walked in, the whole classroom quieted. Harris bent over him to say some platitude, probably, Stiles didn't really care. Yeah, it had probably sucked to get stuck in a video rental joint with the as-of-yet-unnamed Alpha wolf. But Jackson hadn't cried, or made himself sympathetic in any way afterwards. Instead he'd spent his time yelling at Stiles' dad. No, Stiles wasn't going to waste empathy on someone like Jackson.

He did, however, need more information. Maybe Jackson knew something. Even if he didn't know anything at all, that information, if shared, could get Scott and Derek a name. And if Stiles told Derek that name, maybe Derek would be grateful, and he'd pin him against the floor with his crazy werewolf strength and let Stiles blow him.

Or maybe he wouldn't. But a guy had to try. So he leaned forward until he was about six inches from Danny - definitely within the personal bubble Danny had very loudly declared in seventh grade.

"Danny, can I ask you a question?"

"No," Danny said. He didn't even turn around to give Stiles the rejection face to face.

"Well... I'm going to anyway. Did Lydia show up in your homeroom today?"

"No."

Stiles paused, then added, "Can I ask you another question?"

"Answer's still no!" And still with the back. Although it was a very nice jacket Stiles was forced to stare at. Danny had pretty good taste, even if he didn't wear enough color for Stiles' liking.

"Does anyone know what happened to her and Jackson last night?"

"He wouldn't tell me."

An answer longer than one syllable. Stiles was making progress. But the answer didn't make sense. How could Danny not know? "But he's your best friend."

Danny shrugged with one shoulder and didn't answer. From four words to zero, he was backsliding again.

"One more question," Stiles said, leaning in even closer.

"What?" Danny demanded, exasperated. It was the most frequent tone Stiles typically heard in Danny's vicinity, so it didn't throw him off at all.

"Do you find me attractive?"

Waiting for the answer was like balancing on a tightrope. He was gonna get knocked over one way or the other, and either way would have solid impact. Except somehow his body took the metaphor literally and threw itself off the stool without permission. After being humiliated by Mr. Harris, Stiles gave up on trying to get Danny to relate with him and slunk away as soon as the bell rang.

Stiles wondered, for a few minutes, if it would be worth going to the office and asking Jody, the secretary, if Scott had left school early. Unfortunately, that would tip the administration off to Scott not being around, and if they hadn't noticed yet, Stiles didn't want to be the one to squeal.

Instead he wandered toward the locker room, one of the only parts of the school he hadn't looked for Scott. He was pretty sure there was only elective classes happening in the gym at the moment, but he was already starting to feel desperate, and logic wasn't playing a big part of that. He tried calling Scott yet again, leaving another terse voice mail.

As the hallways emptied, Stiles paused outside the men's locker room, listening with his ordinary human hearing for anything that sounded suspiciously nonhuman. He didn't hear anything, so he slipped inside as silently as he could, edging around the bank of lockers toward the showers. Now he could hear boys talking, boys getting dressed, boys slinging stupid jokes at one another. The sound flattened out into ordinary locker sounds, and finally into silence.

And then, Stiles heard a sigh, a hiss of pain, and a sharp inhalation, all in quick succession. He couldn't tell who'd made any of them, but he was going to bet it wasn't somebody who was happy with this situation. He was just about to call out when he heard a locker slam and Jackson gibbered, "I - I don't know where Scott is."

"I'm not here for Scott," said Derek, calm as anything. "I'm here for you."

As soon as he heard Derek's voice, there in the context of his school locker room, Stiles felt his entire body tighten. He slowed to a halt as his muscles contracted, along with the painful pulse of a rapid erection.

"W-why me? I didn't do anything."

"No. But you saw something. Didn't you?"

"No!" Jackson cried. "No, I didn't. I didn't see anything."

Even to his regular, unenhanced human senses, Stiles knew that that was a big pile of bullshit. Derek apparently thought so, too. As Stiles edged around the corner, he could see Derek approaching Jackson, who was wearing nothing but a towel.

Derek's voice was still calm, and very direct. "An animal? A mountain lion?"

"I didn't see  _anything,"_  Jackson repeated. "I s-swear, I'm not lying."

He was both yearning toward and flinching away Derek's presence. Stiles completely understood this dual impulse. But Derek was just moving in closer so he was directly across from Jackson. Stiles would have bet the whole showcase that Jackson was sporting a fear-boner under that towel. He gritted his teeth, listening.

"I want you to calm down and say that again."

"S-say what? That I'm not lying?"

"Tell me you didn't see anything. Slowly."

Jackson made a whimpering noise. "I didn't... see... anything. I'm not lying."

After a few long seconds, Derek reached out with his hand and grabbed Jackson by the hair. Stiles had to bite back his own whimper. "One more thing." He knocked Jackson's head back against the locker. "You should really get that checked out."

Stiles was too worked up to care what Derek was referring to, but he filed the comment away for later perusal. In the meantime, Derek departed as abruptly as he'd appeared, leaving Jackson gasping and fuming against the lockers. Stiles managed to escape in the tumult of swears and slams that followed. He didn't much want Jackson to find him there, but he  _really_  didn't want Derek to discover he'd been listening in.

Unfortunately, European history was a class that had to be attended. Not because Stiles didn't understand the material, and not because he particularly needed the guidance of Mrs Tanner. He was definitely capable of comprehending the material on his own. And in any case, he was a visual learner, not an auditory learner; reading the textbook on his own time helped him far more than listening to someone tell him about it. No, he had to sit in because class participation was ten percent of the grade, and those weren't points he was willing to lose in his battle against Lydia for eventual valedictorian.

There was a difference, though, between throwing his hand into the air when Mrs Tanner left a heavy expectant pause in her narration of the lesson, and actually paying attention. Every time Stiles thought he could get away with it he'd pull his phone out and text Scott again. It became a self-soothing routine towards the end of the class, for which he was having increasing trouble sitting still. The most relief Stiles could get, without standing and shaking the energy out of his veins, was typing sentences to send one word at a time and continually spamming Scott's cell.

Two minutes before the bell, every student zipped up their binders in preparation to flee the classroom and have five minutes of blessed freedom before being required to settle down again. Stiles followed the ritual same as everyone else, but more importantly, he queued Scott's number on his phone so he only had to press talk as the bell rang.

Thank every god in heaven Scott finally, finally answered. Considering Scott was an lame ditcher asshole, and if he hadn't answered by now, Stiles had assumed he wasn't going to, this was a surprise. Stiles was barely out of the classroom, but that wasn't going to stop him from having a conversation about all the supernatural problems going down around them that Scott didn't know about because  _lame. Ditcher. Asshole._

"What," Scott muttered.

A fine  _howdya-do_  for a best friend.  _Jerk._ "Finally! Have you been getting any of my texts?"

"Yeah, like all nine million of them!"

Ohh, that better not have been a complaint. It sounded like a complaint, but it seriously better not have been, because Scott had made his bed by not replying to him, so getting spammed was him lying in it.

"Do you have any idea what's going on? Lydia's totally MIA, Jackson looks like he's got a time bomb inserted into his face, another random guy's dead, and you have to do something about it."

"Like what?"

"Something!"

"Okay, I'll deal with it later." Stiles hear a rustle of fabric that meant Scott was rubbing the phone on something  _not_  his face, then heard a muffled "left left left" from Scott, followed by a few seconds of silence, then someone who sounded like Allison apologising, then a dial tone. He sighed, stuffing his own phone back into his pocket.

Of all the people at school who recognized his existence, he'd eliminated off all but one of them. Scott and Allison were apparently together; Jackson was probably still half-dressed in the locker room; Danny was standing across the hall, talking to his own friends. That left Lydia, who had apparently not come to school today, either, not that he blamed her. But if Scott wasn't going to bother to do anything, Stiles was going to have to man up and check in on her.

He was absolutely not going to stick around school for the rest of the day. Getting out of school wasn't the problem. Stiles had multiple creative ways to escape from school that wouldn't leave an unexcused absence on his record. Gathering the courage to actually walk up the front steps of Lydia Martin's porch and ringing the doorbell, on the other hand... that felt like a monumental task. He hoped there weren't any security cameras trained on him as he went up and down the steps six times before finally stopping in front of the door, taking a deep breath, and knocking.

The woman who answered the door looked enough like Lydia that Stiles had to assume  _mother,_  but she could easily have been young enough to be her sister. He settled on, "I'm sorry to bother you, but is Lydia home?"

"She's taking a rest." The woman cocked her head at him. "Are you a friend of Lydia's?"

"Yeah. I mean, kind of. I mean, yes! Good friends. Yes." He dried off his hands on his jeans and gave her the smile that had worked on Allison but not on Danny. "Could I possibly talk to her for just a minute? I won't stay long, but I had a question. About school."

"Sure." The woman opened the door, ushering him in. "I don't think she's going to make much sense, though. What's your name?"

"I'm Stiles. Stilinski." It was only about a ten second walk between the front door and the staircase, but he took the opportunity to gather information about the interior of the Martin house ( _blue walls flowered china vase Lydia photos from sixth grade)_. After all, he might never have the opportunity to be there again.

"Your father's the sheriff."

He blinked at Lydia's mother, who did not appear to be any more confused than Lydia usually did. "That's right."

"I'll show you in."

Mrs Martin had not prepared him for the fact that Lydia was wearing a short navy blue nightie that more closely resembled a sleepover-themed porno outfit than something that felt comfortable to sleep in. Okay, maybe it would have been a bit creepy for Mrs Martin to spend time detailing the sexiness of her daughter. It's not like Stiles would want his dad to tell a future potential suitor all about his tighty-whities. Still, a minute or two to steel himself against some firm no-looking-below-the-neck gentlemanly behaviour would have been nice.

It took him all of three seconds to ascertain that Lydia was stoned. According to the bottle next to her bed, Lydia was hella-fucking-stoned on Xanax. Stiles understood the impulse to medicate. He really did. Being on Adderall since puberty made it sort of difficult to cast the first stone in the glass house of fixing-minds-and-bodies-with-chemicals. That didn't mean he wasn't going to allow himself the chance for some lighthearted teasing. It wasn't every day a guy got a chance to smirk at Lydia Martin and not get eviscerated.

It was all fun and games until Lydia dropped her hand on his thigh. Before Stiles had the chance to come to terms with Lydia's pinky finger being about one inch from his dick, her entire body went limp, and her face landed on him too. Her could feel the hot air of her exhalation on his leg. There was only one barrier of denim between her lips and his inner thigh. There was no way to stop the instant erection. His battle of wills was focused entirely on not creaming his jeans. He jammed his fists into the blankets on either side of his hips and tensed his knees. There may have been a whimper or two. Control over vocals was less important than control over... other things.

The moment it was safe to stand without her seeing anything untoward - not to mention discovering the extreme power she held over him - Stiles stood up. He paced for a second, then came to a stop in front of her artwork. The red was one of the few spots of color in the grey room, which meant Stiles liked it, even if art in general wasn't his thing.

"Well, I'm gonna go," he said eventually, pointing to the door.  _Ugh, stupid!_  Like she didn't know where her own fucking door was. "Uh. Let you get back to the whole, uh, post-traumatic stress thing."

He had the door almost fully closed behind him when he heard Lydia tell him, softly but very clearly, "Stay."

Stiles threw the door back open to look at her, to see that the room he had just exited was still her room, and that he hadn't fallen into some insane alternate universe. Then he closed the door behind him, because fuck everything, if he  _was_  in an alternate universe where Lydia was going to bother to tell him what to do, nothing and nobody was making him leave it.

"Me, stay? You want me to stay?"

Lydia nodded, murmuring confirmation without parting her pretty lips. Then she circumscribed a circle on the bed with her hand, showing him exactly what he was supposed to do next. It was like half the wet dreams he'd ever had. Stiles threw himself into the spot that she'd indicated. Maybe next time she'd let him kneel there. Maybe next time she'd let him be naked.

Once he was down, she leaned into him, hand going for the thigh she'd previously marked with her breath. "Yes," she said, and jesus god, Stiles was going to lose it, right there.

She stroked her palm down his left cheek. It was like being touched by velvet. He could almost hope for her to curl her fingers, scratch him with her finely manicured nails, except how could he want or expect anything more than what she was already giving him? This was perfection, right here. He reveled in it.

"Stay," she asked again, and he wanted to promise _yes,_  promise  _always,_  promise  _anything you want,_  but he knew if he started talking he probably wouldn't be able to stop, and he refused to ruin this for himself. Lydia's thumbs ran over his neck.

"Please, Jackson?"

It was like dipping his balls in a bucket of ice water. He could practically feel the arousal flaking off like sheets of dropped drywall. He wasn't sure what was more responsible for the complete shrivelling of his dick: being mistaken for that complete douchebag, realising that it was hard to confirm consent with a girl who couldn't even figure out who she was touching, or hearing the person in power beg,  _please._

Okay, no. It was the last one. Stiles was a crappy human being, yes he was, but there the truth lay. Consent was incredibly important, but he could have taken his own dose of Xanax and gotten as high as her to absolve himself of any responsibility. And he would willingly have lost his virginity to a woman confused about who she wanted to be with. But the experience of the person dominating him,  _pleading_  for something, was complete and utter dick-killer.

"Annnnd we're done here."

Stiles gave himself a minute to cast his eyes towards the sky and around the room, wordlessly asking the unseen-but-clearly-malevolent gods why they'd do this to him. It would be nice to know what sort of satisfaction the universe took in giving him ninety eight percent exactly what he wanted, and then using that last two percent to fuck with him. That knowledge could have been a life lesson wrapped in a pithy quote for his graduation speech. By the time he was done rueing his existence, Lydia was slumped over, in the other direction now, head nearly but not quite on her pillow.

Stiles picked up Lydia's buzzing phone. "It's a text," he said dully. "I don't know how to -"

His voice cut off as he realized what was already on the screen. It was a snippet of video, showing a leaping animal that absolutely did  _not_  look anything at  _all_  like a mountain lion.

The phone he pocketed, and he deliberated for several moments before covering Lydia with the blanket at the foot of her bed. Then he ducked out of her room, giving Mrs. Martin a wave and a meaningless series of goodbyes on his way out of the house. He already had his own phone to his ear, dialing Scott again.

"You have to pick up," he muttered. "Pick up pick up pick up, because -"

There he had to pause. Because why? Because something scary and monstrous and wolf-like was attacking people in Beacon Hills? That wasn't exactly something new. Because people were in danger and he didn't know what to do next? Since when had Stiles ever looked to Scott to guide him? Because -

_Because Lydia Martin told me what to do, and I didn't want to do anything other than what she told me to._  That might be the scariest thing of all. He hung up the phone. Scott wasn't going to answer anyway.

It didn't take him long to reach home. Lydia's phone stayed in his pocket while Stiles paced his room, dialing Scott over and over. It wasn't like it was helping, but what else could he do?

"If you could turn on your phone, that'd be great," he said into the phone, "or else - or else I'll kill you. Do you hear me? I'm going to kill you, and... I'm too upset to come up with a witty description of  _how_  I'm going to do it, but I'm just going to do it, okay?" It was the least effective threat he'd ever heard anybody make. Stiles was ashamed to have even begun that sentence, but once he had, he couldn't exactly stop.

He dropped a leg on either side of his computer chair, folded his arms across the edge of it, and laid his head down. He was exhausted, in an extremely edgy, overstimulated sort of way. If the universe could just give him one minute...

A fist hit the side of the door, the loud knock bolting Stiles halfway out of his seat. But that was okay. It was  _interesting_  when his heart beat arhythmically.

"Please tell me I'm going to hear good news at this parent-teacher thing tonight."

"Depends on how you define good news," Stiles shot back.

"I'd define it as you getting straight A's -" Check. "- with no behavioural issues."

And that was a minus check. Possibly five minus checks. "You might want to rethink that definition."

"'Nough said," his dad replied, disappearing down the hall. Stiles could only hope his dad knew him well enough to know it was the second half of the statement that was in doubt, not the first half. He would never want his dad to think his son wasn't clever. Ravenclaw 4 Lyfe, that was Stiles.

The next hour was excruciating. Having dinner with his dad was basically impossible; he couldn't stop fidgeting. Nothing was left unjostled, from the plate to the placemat to the vase of fake flowers that hadn't moved since the had been a feminine influence in the house. Stiles ate half his meal balancing on two legs of the chair. His dad was definitely noticing, but it wasn't particularly worrisome. In other families, an over-attentive parent might have guessed right when they guessed what was on their messed-up kid's mind. There was no way his dad was going to guess  _werewolves, plus a near-moment with the girl I've always worshipped._

His dad took off after dinner. It wasn't until Stiles made chocolatey popcorn for dessert - one of the many things Stiles only ate when his father wasn't home - that he noticed the time on the microwave, and realized it was too early for parent-teacher conferences to begin. That probably meant his dad was looking into the video store death, trying to gather scraps of information before sitting down to hear how crap of a student his kid was. It was bound to be a disappointing night for his dad all around, which made Stiles feel like even more of a shit.

The only thing worse than his dad being unable to solve the case would have been his dad realizing his own son was hiding evidence from him. Stiles needed to get Lydia's phone back to her before his dad thought to collect it - if he wasn't already at the Martins, trying to question a drugged-up teenage girl. And he couldn't do  _that_  until he erased the damned video.

Stiles spent the next twenty minutes staring at the phone. Well, staring at the phone and fiddling with any object on his desk he could reach. Sitting still just wasn't in the cards for a stressed-out teenger with ADHD. He didn't bother to try calling Scott again. For the second time in recent days, Scott had made his priorities clear, and it was obvious that answering Stiles' calls wasn't the top of that list.

He thought about sending the video to his own phone before deleting it from Lydia's, but in the end he didn't make that move. No matter what simple hacks he could follow to delete Lydia's call history, he was sure the authorities had better ones to figure out how to retrieve said deleted info. And again, the worst case scenario was his dad realising just how much he was hiding from him. Stiles had to hide it, for Scott's sake, but the idea of his dad  _knowing_  Stiles had picked Scott over him hurt way more.

After the job was done, Stiles sat there for a few more minutes, thinking. Then he got up and went to where his dad kept his case files. In for a penny, in for a pound - which was somewhat more poetic than  _tamper with evidence once, tamper with it half a dozen times_. If he was going to be the brains of the operation, which was looking extremely fucking likely at this point, he had to know everything, including the things the sheriff's department had gotten wrong because they were assuming everything was mundane.

Stiles left one more voice mail for Scott. "Just come over, okay? I don't care how late. You need to hear about this, and I can't tell you here. Wake me up, whatever."

It actually wasn't very late when Scott showed up at Stiles' window and knocked quietly. Stiles opened it wide enough to let him climb in, but let him do the actual climbing. Two months ago Scott would have made a ridiculous noise trying to do something like that, but now his movements were completely silent.

"You have no idea how much trouble you are in, young man," Stiles snapped. "Your mother and I were worried sick about you. You'd better have a good explanation, or so help me, I will ground you right now."

Scott didn't even smile. "Things are really fucked up, Stiles."

"Well, yeah, they are; you're bombing three classes."

He sat down on Stiles' bed, looking at his hands, which had ordinary nails at the moment. "My mom and Allison's dad came out of parent-teacher conferences, along with everyone else, and there was screaming, and..." He swallowed. "Mr. Argent had a gun. He shot it."

"Shot what?"

"A mountain lion."

Stiles squinted at him. "But - it  _wasn't_  a mountain lion. That thing in the video store, it was -"

"I know."

"So where'd the mountain lion come from?"

"I don't know!" Scott moaned quietly. "Like I said. It's fucked up." He gave Stiles a helpless look. "Me and Allison, we were just... it was her birthday, and she was so sure it was going to suck, and I wanted... I wanted it to be nice. I wanted to give her something nice for a change. But it turned out to be a stupid mess."

"It's her birthday?"

"Yeah. She didn't want anybody to know." Scott buried his face in his hands. "I screwed it up."

"Hey." He could feel the conflict warring inside him between annoyed and comforting, but after an entire day of no answers, annoyed won out. "Look, you could have just  _told_  me where you were."

"I didn't tell anybody. That's kind of the point. We were skipping class." He sighed. "At least the appearance of the mountain lion should take some of the pressure off your dad."

Stiles hit Scott on the shoulder, knocking him out of his self-pity. "Well, thanks for thinking of my dad, but what the hell? What about  _me?_  You don't think I might have been worried about you?"

"Stiles, I'm not going to check in with you when I'm spending time with my girlfriend."

The comment didn't even hurt, Stiles was so angry. "I think mystical shit still trumps girlfriend, no matter how noble you're being. And that's not what I'm talking about. You didn't think about me one time."

"Trust me, I thought about you every time I got one of your nine million texts."

"Yeah, I'm just the annoying best friend. Meanwhile Derek's interrogating Jackson at school, looking for you, and -"

Scott looked up, his face alert. "Derek was there? What happened?"

"Oh,  _now_  you care. Nothing happened. It was just  _me,_  wondering how close you were to getting killed by whatever this thing is. It clearly scared the shit out of Jackson. And -" He paused, and decided he wasn't going to bring up Lydia or the phone. Scott really didn't want to know just how weird Stiles was. He glared at Scott. "All day is a freaking long time to wonder, okay?"

Now Scott looked abashed, and a little ashamed. "I know. I'm sorry. I already got the same thing from my mom. She's going to kill me if she finds out I'm gone."

Suddenly Scott reached out and grabbed him, quickly and efficiently enough to make Stiles squeak, and hugged him. It wasn't a casual bro-hug, but a full body clutch, holding him tight for several long moments.

"Hey," Stiles said, startled, but he was already melting into the hug.

"I'm sorry," Scott said again. "I didn't mean to make you freak out. Are we okay?"

Everything was already okay, with Scott offering this heretofore unheard-of degree of physical contact, but Stiles nodded, and said, "Yeah, it's okay." He wanted to suggest they do the snuggling-on-the-bed thing that he and Allison had done the other night, but he was pretty sure that  _would_  freak Scott out, and he didn't want to waste what they had going on right then.

Scott's head was resting on his shoulder, like he was comfortable there. Like he  _liked_  it.

"Last night, after the thing at the video store." Scott tightened his hand on Stiles' back. "Derek wanted to teach me a lesson. About how feeling pain makes me human."

_Oh my god, did he hit you?_  The words were right on the tip of his tongue. He bit down on them and waited.

"So he broke my hand."

"That's... awful."  _And so fucking hot._   _Do_ _ **not**_ _let Scott notice how hot I find that._  Stiles stayed as still as he could.

"Yeah. He just told me 'it'll heal.' Every time Derek does something nice, it seems like he does another thing to make me remember what an asshole he is. I can't tell if it's intentional or not." He sat back, giving Stiles a wan smile, and stood up. "Well, I'd better go before my mom notices. See you tomorrow?"

"See you," Stiles agreed. He remained on the bed, watching Scott disappear as silently as he'd come through the window.

It was late, and there was a curfew, but as soon as Scott was gone, Stiles knew he was going to go over to Allison's. For a few ugly moments, he wasn't even sure he was going to let her know he was coming, but finally, he did send her a text that simply said:  _ **?**_

_**Hey, Stiles.** _

Now he actually had to ask permission, but strangely enough, this came easily once Allison saw his name.  _ **I was thinking I could come over?**_

_**Are you okay?** _

There was no concern about whether it would be better to keep curfew. He felt a bright flush of kinship at that.  _ **Yeah, it's fine. Scott just left.**_

_**I'll be up for at least another half hour. You'd be welcome, but it's going to be harder than usual to get you inside. I'm so grounded.** _

He hesitated.  _ **I don't want to get you in more trouble.**_

_**I don't think that's possible. Come on over. Meet me outside the garage.** _

He locked the door to his bedroom, scrambled out his window and crept around to the side of the house where his bike was waiting. It wasn't likely his dad would check on him again before bed, not considering how much work he was going to have tonight, but if he did, he'd probably assume Stiles was doing something private. He made it over to Allison's house in under ten minutes, avoiding two cars and two intrepid dog-walkers along the way.

He didn't see her at first, but she stepped out of the shadows as he rolled up by the curb, beckoning for him to come up onto the grass behind the laurel bush. It provided plenty of shade to hide his bike, so he brought it along, holding it off the grass so as not to leave wheel tracks.

"Come on," she said, and took his hand.

He hung back, though he couldn't have explained why if she'd asked. "Maybe we should just stay out here."

"Stiles. Come inside."

It wasn't completely unlike the way Stiles had felt when Lydia had told him to stay. He didn't really  _want_  to have a sexual response to his best friend's girlfriend, but he didn't exactly feel guilty about it either.

He let her lead him into the house through the side garage door, up the back staircase and into her room. This time he crawled right onto the bed and waited for her while she closed and locked her door. She wrapped Stiles up without hesitation, holding him in an embrace that left him shuddering and close to tears.

"Fuck," he whispered. "It's just... it's been a hell of a day."

"There've been a lot of those going around," she agreed.

He'd already been turned on before he'd climbed onto Allison's bed, not to mention the experience with Lydia that afternoon. Feeling Allison against him now was making his cock twitch in the most embarrassing way, but he was feeling too warm and safe to ask her to stop.

"So you got into trouble for skipping school today?"

"Yeah, but it was okay. I've never skipped before."

"Never?"

"Not even one class."

He smiled. "How'd it feel?"

"Good," she said. "And also well-deserved. I think I'll have to do it again before I graduate."

"Maybe again next year on your birthday?"

There was a silence, during which Stiles mentally punched himself in the face repeatedly.  _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

"Maybe," she said finally. "It was the best birthday I've ever had, even after the appearance of that mountain lion. But, honestly?"

"Always."

"I could have stood a little less romantic strolling and a little more sex. It was incredibly sweet, and by ten-thirty I was sick to death of it. I just didn't know how to ask Scott  _why are we not in my bed right now_  when he was being so thoughtful and caring."

"I think you should just tell him how it's going to be."

Allison propped herself up on one arm, gazing down on him. Her hair fell onto Stiles' cheek, casting her face in shadow. "That's kind of an asshole move, telling him what to do."

"Why? Because girls aren't supposed to tell people what to do?" He tried to smirk, but the way she was looking at him, he couldn't quite manage it. "He's not in love with you because you're nice."

Her cheeks flushed, but she didn't look away. "We just met. It's a little early to use words like  _love,_  don't you think? Are you in love with Derek?"

"Hell, no. I'm not anything with him. I really, really am not going anywhere near him. He would break my hand and it wouldn't heal."

"What?"

"Nothing." Stiles dared to reach out and touch the curve of Allison's arm where it emerged from her t-shirt. It wasn't as velvety-soft as Lydia's, but it was smooth and strong. He took his hand away.

"And you're wrong. Scott does want a nice girl. Somebody he can take care of." Her mouth tightened. "I don't need anybody to take care of me."

"I think Scott could use somebody to take care of  _him,"_  said Stiles. "Like, he's in control because he has to be, but... I don't think that's what he really wants. He needs somebody who could help him let go."

She tilted her head so that her hair fell over her eye. "Like you do?"

Stiles struggled to respond, and decided he'd better just nod instead.

"You want somebody to help you let go, Stiles?"

"Yeah," he whispered.

Allison waited one more heart-pounding moment before hugging him again, her breasts pressing up against his face. "I really hope you can find someone to do that for you. Come on, now... it's time for bed."

If he'd been in a more ordinary frame of mind, he might have said  _why don't I just stay?_  But the way he was feeling, and the way Allison had been looking at him, he couldn't make it into a joke. No, he didn't  _want_  to go. And Allison had told him it was time for bed, and... it was.

She took him downstairs and stayed in the kitchen, making a sandwich, while Stiles retreated through the garage, claimed his bike, and rode home. Once back inside, he closed his window and texted Allison.  _ **I'm home now.**_

_**Thanks for letting me know.** _

His mind was filled with a strange combination of words and images and sensations. He knew they'd follow him into sleep, Lydia's head on his thigh and Scott's full-body hug and Derek's hand in Jackson's hair and Allison's  _you want somebody to help you let go, Stiles?_  He had no idea how his subconscious was going to make it all fit together. Luckily, that wasn't his conscious mind's job. All he had to do was submit to sleep and his brain would take care of the rest.

* * *

_ <http://youtu.be/RxmirNqrn8c> _

_We're on this rollercoaster ride_  
 _Hold on, I'll stay here by your side_  
 _We head up to the sky then we slide back down_  
 _Upside down try to figure out_  
 _Not sure if we could work it out  
_ _I wanna be alone but you feel like home_

_Answer the phone, I know that you're home_  
 _I wanna get you alone, and do it again, do it again_  
 _Answer the phone, I know that you're home  
_ _I wanna get you alone, and do it again, do it again_

_The signals all are flashing red_  
 _It doesn't matter what was said_  
 _This bed is much too big without me and you_  
 _This all seems so ridiculous_  
 _Why can't we just get over this_  
 _Don't make me say the obvious  
_ _Without you_

_I practice all my lines to a telephone while you were sleeping_  
 _I practice all my lines to a telephone while you were sleeping  
_ _I practice all my lines to a telephone while you were sleeping_

_I remember the way you curled your toes_  
 _On the side of the stage at all our shows_  
 _And the glow on your face just because of one rose  
_ _And when I wake up in the morning and you're wearing my clothes_

_\- Sugar Ray, "Answer the Phone"_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're continuing this mirror of canon, with only a very few tweaks. Lots of quoting from 1x06. Poor Stiles; this chapter doesn't exactly end on a positive note, but we promise, we have lots of nice things for him coming up. 
> 
> Warnings for discussion of sexual orientation, light Dom/sub, masochism, and lots of complicated feelings. 
> 
> -amy and gala

 

Stiles woke up to his phone ringing. A lot of people turned their phones off at night, or at least charged them in another room as to not be bothered by someone's late night Facebook status update. Not Stiles. Even before all the werewolf shit had gone down, Stiles had been the kind of guy that could always be contacted. He had online friends in too many time zones to deny them 24/7 access.

But it wasn't a text from Franco from Wiltshire, or Costel39, or any of the others. It was just Scott, and it was an actual voice call. Stiles jabbed the button and carefully balanced the phone on his face so he could slide his arm back under the blankets. Standard procedure, unless he was about to be told something that necessitated getting out of bed.

"Hey man. 'Sup?"

Rather than a hello, Scott groaned into his ear.

"Should I be asking what's going down? You don't sound happy. Did you get bit by a randomly appearing mountain lion? Are you now a were-mountain lion/wolf hybrid?"

"The entire universe is out to cock-block me, man."

"I promise I won't interrupt you if you want to jerk off right now," Stiles replied without thinking. Then he grimaced and shut his eyes tightly when the replay of his words went through his head.  _Shit._ Well, he couldn't backpedal. Backpedaling was suspicious as hell. It wasn't like Scott knew he had crushes on multiple people. There was a reason Stiles took his interest in Lydia to an extreme in front of others. As far as Stiles knew, Scott didn't even take the comments about Danny seriously.

"I don't want to jerk off. I want to be with Allison. And we almost did that! It was going to be so great. She's so pretty... so nice."

"Uh-huh," Stiles managed. This wasn't the time for Stiles to tell Scott he was full of shit. His reasons for liking Allison were a hell of a lot different, and they definitely didn't include the words  _nice_  or  _pretty_. Still, he could be supportive.

"But her aunt walked in. Kate... man, I swear she exists just to fuck me over. I was hiding in the closet for almost twenty minutes!"

"There are so many jokes I could make here, dude. I hope you appreciate the fact that I'm not touching that."

"Uh, okay?" Confused Scott was adorable. Stiles kind of wanted to skritch his head. "So then I'm heading home, blue balling like crazy, and the freakin' Alpha attacked and trapped me in my mom's car, and drew this weird-ass symbol in the condensation."

"Can you describe it?" Stiles rolled to the edge of the bed and pawed blindly for the notebook that he usually left close by. "I'm awake now, I'll get my Giles on, and -"

"Yeah, you're gonna freakin' have to! Because it's the spiral Derek's sister was buried under, and he wouldn't tell me anything. Said I was better off not knowing."

"Wait, you talked to Derek already?" Stiles wasn't jealous. He wasn't. Yeah, he wanted Scott to talk to him, share everything about this with him, but logically speaking, second-hand info Stiles could scrounge from the internet that might be wrong, versus tapping the source? It made sense.

"Do you consider him asking dumb questions, telling me I can sense feelings like an X-Man, then not telling me anything about the one thing I'm sure about talking? Plus he broke into my damn room!"

"He what?"

"I got home, freaking out because of the Alpha, and he was sitting there in the pitch black, waiting for me!"

"Wow." Okay, no. He was jealous as fuck. Why did Derek loom at everyone but him? What could he do to draw Derek in for some Stiles loomage? Maybe he could put a bloody rabbit in the corner of his bedroom. Derek's wolfiness would go crazy for it.

"I think it was because he demanded I break up with Allison, and I told him I would. I think he wanted to smell her on me or whatever. Screw that though. If he can't even be honest about stuff, why should I do what he wants?"

 _Because it would be hot._  "Um. I got nothing." He really didn't. Advice was basically impossible when the mental image of Derek ordering both him and Scott around was getting more and more detailed.

'Maybe you should come talk to him with me."

"Oh, yeah,  _that_  would be a good idea." Stiles glared at the phone. "When there's already so much trustworthy trustingness happening between us. You want to help yourself? Stay as far away from that guy as you can."

"But the three of us were a really good team last time," Scott protested. Because he was completely delusional, obviously.

"Were you attending the same 'last time' I attended?"

Scott apparently took that question at face value. "Uh, I think so? Remember, you kept him safe and I found the bullet and then you hit him awake and I saved the bullet and then we burned it and Derek's arm was fine? I mean, he didn't thank us, because he's kind of a jerk, but it all worked out. You said yourself it was awesome." Scott paused. "Wasn't it awesome?"

Stiles had no way to explain that the awesomeness of supernatural life-saving was completely nullified by how disturbing the subsequent jerking off fantasies had become. Not to mention he was now living in a realm dependent entirely on lies. Because of Derek, he couldn't be honest with Scott. Because of Scott, he couldn't be honest with his dad. Because of Derek and Scott, he couldn't be honest with Allison, who was the only person who actually listened without assuming he was joking or being gross. Everyone in his life was making every _thing_  in his life impossible, and it was after midnight and -  _fuck._

"Would you just fuck off about Derek!"

"Um, dude..." Scott trailed off, clearly confused as to how things had turned. Well, too bad for him. It wasn't Stiles' job to lead Scott to every answer.

"He's not going to fix anything, okay? He's just as big and bad and scary and unpredictable as the Alpha. If you're going to go to him for answers, leave me out of it."

"Stiles." Scott sounded hurt, but Stiles wasn't going to back down on this one. He cut him off.

"I mean it, Scott. I know there's nothing special about me; I'm not a werewolf or anything else awesome, but you've always trusted me before."

"I still trust you! That's why I want you to come with."

"No. Nope. Sorry, no, done." And with that fantastic goodbye, Stiles hung up on him. Maybe Scott could be persistent enough to get ten thousand answers from Derek, but Stiles wasn't about to put himself in a situation that would lead to more dangerous dreams. Not to mention risking spilling the beans to Scott about just why it was a bad idea for Stiles and Derek to be in the same room together. That was a whole world of honesty he wasn't prepared to face.

* * *

Stiles had breakfast alone most days of the week, but every now and then his dad was home while Stiles was getting ready for school. Today was one of those, although his dad didn't bother to make breakfast for him anymore, and Stiles was forbidden to have coffee. He poured himself a bowl of cereal and slid into the seat across from his dad. "Hey."

"You have a lacrosse game coming up?"

Stiles was too surprised to specify when. He nodded.

"I'll do my best to be there." His dad looked at him over his mug. "So, you haven't tried to wheedle any information from me or Bev about the mountain lion."

 _Crap._  Who would have thought that not being a nosy bastard would be the thing that would trigger attention. Stiles shoved the biggest heaping spoonful he could in his mouth, and then mumbled an answer around it. Not a real answer, a Peanuts  _wah wah wah_  answer, but hopefully his dad would respond like he'd heard actual words, and it would give him a moment to see where his dad was going with this, and think.

"I would have thought you'd be all over the death of the animal that caused the most excitement Beacon Hills has seen in years."

 _Double crap._ His dad was right. Stiles definitely would be, had he not had a theory it was the Hunters semi-literally throwing the lion under the bus to close the case and move the attention along.

"I guess I didn't want to know everything?" Think boy, think. "I'm kinda maybe semi-dating this person, and they're really into PETA, and I didn't want to be the guy that knows every detail about a wild animal being murdered?" Hah. Perfect! Stiles ate another bite of his cereal, supremely satisfied with himself. His dad would totally buy that.

"What's her name?"

Not out of the woods yet, but close. Stiles was confident in his ability to bullshit. Worse come to worst, Stiles could find a random Getty Images picture to put on his phone of her.

"Alex. We had one group date thing, hence the semi-maybe thing. I dunno if she came with her friends to see me, or saw me because of her friends. If that makes sense. Does that make sense?" Stiles wagged his spoon at his dad, who only sighed as milk dripped off it.

"Sure. Bring her over to the house sometime so I can meet her, okay?" He nodded out the window. "You giving Scott a ride today?"

Stiles twisted in his seat far enough to spot Scott waiting on the porch with a kicked-dog expression on his face. "Uh - no. I'm pretty sure I'm not." He picked up his bowl of cereal and went to the door, not opening it, but close enough so he could talk to Scott without his dad hearing.

"Can I come in?" Scott asked.

"If you tell me you didn't talk to Derek again last night, then yes."

Scott had zero poker face. Stiles thought he might actually be able to read the word  _guilty_ in the lines on his forehead. Stiles wheeled away, rolling his eyes.

"Jesus christ, you  _did._  After everything I told you about him. You must really think I'm a fucking idiot."

"He's the only one who knows anything, Stiles! I have to rely on him. Okay, maybe he's a little volatile, but he's proven -"

" _Volatile?"_  Stiles hissed. "Are you serious? Me and Derek, we're like potassium permanganate and glycerol. Nitric acid and sodium thiosulphate. You might as well throw us in a fume hood and walk away, because there's going to be an explosion, and I can't promise I'll come out of it intact."

Scott was doing that confused thing again, but at the moment, Stiles was too angry to find it endearing. He put both hands against the screen door and pressed his nose to it.

"I can't," he said through gritted teeth, "be around him."

Scott shook his head. "I won't let him hurt you, Stiles."

"That's not the problem."

"Then what  _is_  the problem?" Scott shouted.

Stiles pushed open the screen door and let it slam behind him. As Stiles approached, Scott stumbled backwards down the steps, his eyes going wide. Stiles managed to keep his voice low, but the words came out too fast to stop them.

"The problem is that I  _want_  him to hurt me. The problem is that I would let him do anything to me.  _Anything._  And I can't let a guy like Derek get that close to me. I have zero control when he's around. I have dreams about him that are blowing my mind. That's the fucking  _problem._ Okay? Are you happy now? Is that enough  _too much fucking information_  for you, Scott?"

Scott had gotten smaller and smaller during this flood of words, until by the end he was hunched back on himself, staring up at Stiles in miserable confusion. "You're gay?" He made a useless gesture. "I thought... don't you like Lydia?"

Stiles could feel his eye twitching. "Go away. Or I will throw my cereal bowl at you, I swear to fuck."

He didn't stick around to watch Scott leave. He took his cereal bowl back into the house and put it in the sink, running water over it. Then he leaned his forehead on the refrigerator, trying to stop himself from trembling. Oh god, he needed Allison.

"Well, that didn't sound very good." His dad rested a hand on Stiles' shoulder. "I didn't realize you two were having a fight."

"It's not really a fight." He turned his head to feel the cool stainless steel surface of the fridge against his cheek. "I don't know what it is."

"Yeah, well, when two people are as close as you guys are, there's bound to be some friction."

Stiles managed to refrain from choking. "Yeah," he said. "I think that's all it is."  _Friction. Jesus fucking christ._

He took his backpack and went to sit in his Jeep, trying to calm down, but his hand was still shaking badly when he dug his phone out and called Allison.

"Stiles," she said, surprised.

He didn't give her a chance to ask anything. "I'm freaking out. I told Scott about Derek and - and I'm freaking out, and I have to go to school. Did I mention I'm freaking out?"

"Hang on. Where are you? We still have a half hour before first bell."

"I'm in my garage." He writhed in embarrassment as the scene replayed in his head. "God, why did I  _tell_  him?"

"Because he's your best friend. Stiles, do you need me to come get you, or can you drive over here?"

"I don't know. But I haven't told him  _ever,_  this whole time we've been friends _._  Because now he's going to know, and it's going to be weird for him. He's not going to hug me or anything anymore." He was already annoyed with himself for being so ridiculously whiny.

"Turn the car on, Stiles, and pull out into the street. You can keep talking to me."

Autopilot somehow got him out of the driveway and moving in a forward direction. He felt undone in a way that none of this supernatural stuff had managed to do.

"It's not just my life," he tried to explain. "It's my  _best friend._  I think I could deal with losing the first one, but..."

"You're not going to lose him. Wait for me at the corner of Forest and Green; I'm technically still grounded."

He kept his head down and focused on the in and out of breathing until he heard the passenger door open, then close, and then Allison's arms were around him, holding him while he fell apart. It didn't matter that he was idling there in broad daylight, in plain sight of anybody who happened to walk past his very recognizable car.

"Yeah," she murmured, "it's okay. M'here."

He dug his face into her shirt, trying to block out the stupid everything-else that was interfering with his Allison fix. "We can't really go upstairs and do that lying down thing on your bed before school, can we."

"No. This is what we get right now." She took a resolute breath, then pushed him back to look at him, framing his face with both hands. Her expression was very calm and very serious. Somehow it squashed down the panic into a manageable bundle. "But you can handle this."

"Okay?" The answer came out in an hysterical croak. Immediately he shook his head and tried again. "Okay. Yes."

"Yes." She held him firmly in her hands, and her eyes made it a question, one he couldn't have ignored if he'd wanted to. He nodded vigorously.

"Yes, I'm okay. I can handle this."

Allison smiled at him, the kind of smile he'd only ever seen her give to Scott before that moment, and it was like a cool facecloth in the height of summer: soothing, and enough to make his skin stop crawling, even if it was fleeting. She dropped her hands to his lap and interlaced their fingers, then kissed him soundly on the cheek.

"Holy shit," he said, feeling absurdly normal again, and laughed. "How did you do that?"

"Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea?" She flashed him a very ordinary wicked Allison smile, but she didn't let go of his hand. "We'd better get to school. I am completely forbidden from being even tardy for the rest of the year. So tell me exactly what Scott did when you told him about Derek."

* * *

Stiles didn't see Scott again until social studies. No doubt the bomb dropped on Scott's front steps had something to do with that. He'd been hoping for a day of mindless classes, because he'd been done with the entire day starting at about 8:15, and having some pushy teacher trying to cram another concept down his throat really wasn't on his To Do list. Considering Mr Bergen had already wheeled a tv into the room, Stiles had figured he'd gotten his wish granted. Sitting still to watch half a movie for a period might not have been his strong suit, but it at least meant Scott couldn't try to talk to him.

But the halls were still busy when Scott walked in and nodded his head at him, and the warning bell hadn't rung yet, so Scott had at least a few minutes before Mr Bergen closed the door and turned off the lights. And of course he took the seat right behind Stiles.

"Still not talking to me?"

_Obviously not._

Next Scott said some crap about his dad, which Stiles happily ignored. His dad was fine, aside from a few bruises, and if Scott really cared, or if Stiles was actually worried, that conversation would have happened a lot earlier. Scott was just trying to get to Stiles through his weaknesses.

"Okay, what if I told you I'm trying to figure this whole thing out, and I went to Derek for help?"

Stiles didn't care if he went to Derek for help, or for training, or for fancy Buffy-esque leather tomes. Hell, he didn't care if Scott went to Derek for a great peach cobbler recipe. Stiles had made his opinions clear last night, and Scott had totally ignored them, because Scott clearly thought Stiles' opinions weren't important enough.

"If I was talking to you," he said without turning around, "I'd say that you're an idiot for trusting him. But obviously I'm not talking to you."

He forced down his curiosity and maintained his silent treatment for an absurdly long time. It took almost a whole two minutes before he broke like porcelain and twisted in his seat to look at Scott.

"What did he say?" Because of course he wanted to know what Derek thought.

Scott frowned, mouth hanging open slightly, like he wanted to make sure he'd gathered the right words before speaking. "I don't care that you're gay. You didn't really give me the time to say that this morning, but I don't. And you don't have to pretend with Lydia, bearding or whatever it's called. No one cared when Danny came out."

"Lydia was not a beard. Is not a beard, never has been one. The moment she drops that tool Jackson, I will put a ring on it, like Beyonce requested." Stiles was unashamed of the reference. Inside every guy was a Kurt Hummel who could do the whole routine of at least one girly song. Stiles was sure of it, because his dad could do all of Stevie Nicks' shawl twirling, and his dad was a pretty manly man.

Scott looked doubtful. "I don't think Lydia's gonna marry you, man. She's way too self-centered. She's gonna want a guy who only wants her."

"You're having listening problems again." Stiles threw a pen at him. "Wanting Derek does not preclude wanting Lydia. Or anybody else, for that matter. It's possible to like girls and guys; it's called being bisexual. For that matter it's possible to like girls and guys and genderqueer people. That's called being pansexual. And there are other ones too, but since they're irrelevant to me, I'm not going to confuse you."

It was obviously too late. Scott was beyond confused. "So...you're bisexual, then?"

"I think? For now? I mean, Beacon Hills isn't exactly teeming with people who reject the gender binary for me to look and and consider dating. Maybe I'll learn new stuff about myself once I graduate."

"Huh. Okay, so -" Scott cut himself off as Mr Bergen got up and turned the lights off. Every other conversation quickly petered out too. For as much of a slack class as had turned out to be, with a movie at least once a week, the teacher was pretty strict about them actually watching and taking notes. The only time a student ever got detention in social studies was if Mr Bergen caught you talking. And chances were, Scott would need his notes later, so he'd better take good ones.

It was hard to focus, though, when things had changed so radically in such a short amount of time. He wasn't exactly sure how to tell Scott,  _look, the liking-guys part of my unintended announcement wasn't actually the big deal._  Because Scott had apparently missed the rest of Stiles' memo: the part where he'd admitted the idiotic desire to be manhandled by an emotionally unstable, uncommunicative asshole. Or, possibly, Scott  _had_  heard, and was still dealing with it in his own little confused-werewolf way, and Stiles would hear about it eventually. There was no way to know for sure. Even asking might not help, not if Scott himself didn't know how he felt. All he could do now was watch, and wait, and deal with the consequences over time.

By the time the movie was over, Stiles felt more jittery than he had before Scott had sat down behind him. He elbowed Scott on the way out the door. "So are we still discussing my fascinating coming out, which will no doubt be around the school by lunch? I better get a rainbow balloon taped to my locker, by the way. I earned it."

That earned him a small smile. "I'll get you a balloon if you want? But I hope you know I wouldn't tell anyone. How would it get out?"

"Because Tamika of the bleach-blonde-imported-from-Indonesia hair was sitting beside me, diagonal from you, and her ears are tuned for the frequency of gossip like the Fundies tune to FBC radio. Anyway, do you have any more questions, or some definitions you don't want to Google for fear of accidentally getting porn? Or are we discussing what Derek told you last night?"

"It really wasn't much. Honestly. He still wouldn't tell me what the spiral meant." Scott went on as they walked down the hall towards the corner they'd have to split up at. Stiles let him talk without interrupting until the recollection of Derek's insanity was too much. Not to mention the mounting jealousy about Derek's willingness to be all buddy-buddy with Scott.

"He wants you to tap into your animal side and get angry? Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but every time you do that, you try to kill someone. And that someone is usually me."

"I know! That's what he means when he says he doesn't know if he can teach me. I have to be able to control it."

"Well, how does he teach you to do that?"

"I don't know." Scott shrugged. "I don't think he does, either."

Stiles couldn't help think about the way Allison had defused his anxiety in about ten seconds that morning. He was absolutely sure she could do the same for Scott's anger, if only she knew about the werewolf stuff. It wasn't like Stiles didn't know what to do; he could kind of see what Allison had done, but there was absolutely no way Scott would let him lie down with him on a bed and snuggle him until he was calm.

"When are you seeing him again?"

Scott was looking more uncomfortable the longer they talked about Derek. "He told me not to talk about it. Let's just - act normal and try to get through the day."

"When?" Stiles pressed.

Scott sighed. "He's picking me up at the animal clinic after work."

"After work. All right, well, that gives me till the end of the school day, then."

"To do what?"

Stiles took a resolute breath and let it out. "To teach you myself."

"Teach me  _what?"_

"How to deal with your feelings. How to make it okay when it isn't, because you have to. Sometimes you can't get what you need, but it has to be okay anyway, because you have school or your parents or other things, and you can't just lie on the bed and freak out all day." Stiles realized Scott was staring at him. "Not that, uh, you ever feel like doing that."

Scott nodded. "I... guess I don't," he said apologetically.

"No, no, that's probably good," Stiles said. "It's definitely good. Better than feeling like that, anyway."

Scott stared at the collar of Stiles' shirt while he thought. "So what do  _you_  do? When you feel like that, I mean?"

 _I call Allison,_  he didn't say. But not saying it was kind of a revelation all by itself, because Stiles realized, as he listed them, that all the alternatives he'd experienced had fallen short. "I stay up all night and talk to people on the other side of the world. I mindlessly surf the net. I take drugs.  _Prescription_  drugs," he clarified. "I eat a lot of Doritos. I jerk off. I watch endless episodes of -"

"Okay, okay," Scott said, throwing up his hands in defeat. "I get it. You distract yourself."

"Yeah. Some things work better than others. Other people work best."

"Other people." Now Scott looked confused again. "You mean somebody to talk to?"

"Talking actually makes it worse." Although, as Stiles thought about the way it had been with Derek, when he'd been taking care of  _him,_  kind of, he'd  _felt_  calm. Even when Derek had been unconscious, he'd come up with something to do to handle it. And then, afterwards, he'd freaked out. "I think if you end up having to make it okay all by yourself - if you have to suck it up and cope, without leaning on somebody else - then there's, like, a consequence later. It's physics. The equal and opposite reaction."

"Okay. So you're saying it'd be better for me to have somebody to... to help me?"

 _Allison,_  Stiles wanted to shout, but clearly that wasn't an option, not with wolf-Scott hovering behind one eyeblink of anger. "Either that, or somebody to deal with the consequence."

Scott paused, his brow knotting further. "And... you want to do that?"

"Not really," Stiles admitted. "But I think I can help you figure out a way to get it anyway, and that might be enough for now. Come on."

Scott followed him, though that was small comfort. "Where are we going?"

"Lunch." Not because Stiles was hungry, although he was, but because he knew Allison would be there. He couldn't exactly ask her for help, but maybe being around her would rub off on him and somehow make him more effective by osmosis.

Scott hid, in a very obvious way, behind his American history textbook and fretted. "Did you figure out a plan yet?"

"I think so," Stiles said. He hadn't, but that had never stopped him before.

He eyed Stiles. "Does that mean you don't hate me now?"

"No, but your crap has infiltrated my life, so I have to do something about it. Plus I'm definitely a better Yoda than Derek." It didn't matter how keyed up he was; Stiles had to snicker.  _"Your Yoda I will be._  I said it backwards, because -" He saw the way Scott was looking at him, and cut that comment off. "Yeah, I definitely still hate you."

Allison chose that moment to look up and notice Scott, who vanished as quickly as he could down the hall into the boys' bathroom. "Scott," she called, scrambling to gather up her books, "Scott, wait..."

Stiles waited for her at a reasonable distance, watching her turn away from the closed door with a crestfallen expression.

"Why's he avoiding me?" She looked back over her shoulder at the door to the bathroom. "Is this about you and Derek?"

"No, it's completely nothing about that."

Allison fixed her eyes on him. That look was surprisingly intense for the middle of the hallway, but Stiles managed to stay present and vertical.

"Is it about you and me?"

He had to swallow on a dry throat before he could answer her. "I'm pretty sure that question has not come up in any of our conversations."

"Then what?"

He had to give her something. Something that wasn't  _he's a werewolf._  "He's worried you're bad for him. But I'm going to convince him he's wrong."

That startled her into a smile. "You think I'm good for Scott?"

"Of course I do. What kind of a question is that? You guys are freaking adorable together. It's like watching puppies and kittens cavorting through a verdant field."

She laughed. "I thought maybe you might be jealous of us."

"Jealous? I'm  _so_  jealous. But that doesn't mean you don't get to have what you have with him. I think it's great, full stop. Just give me a couple hours to get him refocused. First, I need to  _acquire_  a few things."

"Acquire, hmm?" She tilted her head. "You need some help with... the acquisition?"

"I would absolutely freaking love that."

He sent Scott a quick text in the bathroom, saying he'd meet him on the practice field in fifteen minutes. Then he linked arms with Allison, trying not to feel smug about getting to have a little time alone with her at school. She was still smiling.

"So what's on the list?"

He numbered his fingers. "Duct tape. Coach Finstock's heart rate monitor. His phone. A big iced coffee."

Allison smothered a giggle. "One of these things is not like the other..."

"Okay, okay, the last one is optional. I'm thinking I can find everything else in his office, if I'm lucky."

They decided that it would be simplest if Allison kept watch in the hall while Stiles rooted through Finstock's things, with a ready excuse of something awful happening elsewhere in the building if they were spotted. That would allow Stiles time to get away if necessary.

He couldn't help hugging her hard before going in. She hugged him back, looking pleased.

"What was that for?"

"You. You just..." He tried to explain. "I can't think of anybody else who's ever put up with my shit, other than Scott. But you do."

"Yeah, I do. I kind of love it."

He felt his own smile widen. "You love my shit?"

"Yeah. Don't let it go to your head." She gave him a little push that was more of a smack than anything. "And don't get caught."

Stiles saluted her, feeling giddy as he stumbled backward into Finstock's office. "Yes, ma'am."

Lucky for both of them it went without a hitch, and Stiles found the first three things in under five minutes, and the coffee he hadn't really wanted anyway. When he opened the office door a tiny crack and peered out, Allison was already casually walking down the hall. He picked up his lacrosse stick and headed the other way toward the practice field, texting Allison with one hand as he went.  **Success.**

**Way to go, Bandit. See you in econ.**

Stiles put on a burst of speed as his adrenaline propelled him to where Scott was waiting for him behind the bleachers. Scott gave Stiles' lacrosse stick a dubious look.

"Wait, so we're not going to fourth period?"

Stiles gestured to the expanse of grass in front of them in answer. "Does it look like it?"

"Shouldn't we maybe go to class? Since I'm bombing like, everything?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise that you'd paid exceptional attention at your parent teacher conferences and vowed with swordtip to forehead to do better. Oh, wait. You didn't." Stiles rolled his eyes. "Come on man, one period is not going to bring your grades down any lower, but one hour of practice might save you from being stuck with Mr Menace." Scott made a face, but continued walking towards the field with him, so Stiles considered his point made. He added, "And it's day four, dummy. On evens you have your spare period now."

"How do you know my schedule better than I do?" Scott didn't wait for a reply, which probably would have been something like  _because I actually care that you don't have to drop out and get a GED._ Stiles had a lot of feelings about education, half of them out of spite towards the first psychiatrist he'd had, that had told his mom he'd probably struggle in school, and she should consider alternative schools.  _"_ That's good. I think if my mom got a call home right now about me skipping, she'd kill me."

Stiles plunked his duffle and lacrosse stick on the front bench of the bleachers, and sat down so he didn't have to juggle everything. He pulled the recently liberated heart rate monitor from the bag and handed it over to Scott. After giving him a bit of crap about the definition of theft, Scott shut up and strapped the heart rate monitor to his chest under his shirt.

Stiles carefully looped the duct tape sticky-side-out around Scott's wrists, then again with the sticky side in. Even if he didn't wolf out, Scott wouldn't appreciate having his regular old human arm hairs ripped out when Stiles took the tape off later. Scott didn't move his feet from where Stiles had placed him. He just twisted around and strained to meet his eyes. It added onto the excitement that was simmering in Stiles' stomach.

"This wasn't exactly how I wanted to spend my free period," Scott muttered.

There was a space in the conversation for Stiles to say  _me either_ , but seeing as that was a blatant lie and wolfy Scott could sense lies, Stiles instead backed up a few feet, taking his duffle and stick with him.

"All right. Ready?"

"No?"

"Remember, don't get angry." Stiles bent and turned the app on Finstock's phone on.

"I'm starting to think this is a really bad idea."

Well, too bad for Scott. Stiles didn't think it was a bad idea at all. Not for reasons of wolfiness, because he honestly believed that his Incredible Hulk-inspired idea of keeping Scott's heart rate down was much more positive long-term than Derek's idea of breaking Scott's freakin' hand. Nor was it bad for Stiles' own enjoyment. Life had been pretty crap lately, but here he was, getting an opportunity to be ordered to hurt someone. It was undeniably fantastic.

Stiles rolled the top edge of his stick over the ball before letting it pop into the pocket. He raised the stick, twisting it as he lifted, and shot the ball forward. From such a short distance, his accuracy was dead on; the ball struck Scott in the abdomen. The heart rate monitor shot up instantly, to 115. Stiles giggled, pure joy bubbling out of his throat, and threw a second ball. That one hit Scott's collarbone, and Scott bent sideways, unable to grab himself with taped wrists.

"'Kay, that one kinda hurt."

"Quiet!" Stiles ordered. "Remember, you're supposed to be thinking about your heart rate, about staying calm." And  _he_  was clearly going to have to think about gross stuff, to keep his dick calm. Because this was feeling great already.

After a few more solid strikes, Stiles made the executive decision to back up a few steps. Not enough to lower his accuracy; that was literally the last thing he wanted. Just enough that his erection would be a little less obvious, if Scott happened to be looking directly at him. Hopefully Scott was focusing on his own reactions, not Stiles'.

"Argh - son of a bitch!"

Stiles was going to be hearing that in his dreams. It was with a touch of delirious joy that Stiles replied, "You know what? I think my aim is actually improving!"

"I wonder why!" Scott snapped.

Stiles looked down at the monitor, the excuse for this whole thing. Scott was up to 130 now. "Ah ah ah, don't get angry."

"I'm not getting angry," Scott muttered, following that up with a bellow when Stiles hucked another ball into his thigh, inches from his dick.

Stiles kept throwing, kept hitting Scott, kept looking down at Finstock's phone to check the coloured gauge because, quite frankly, it was either act like this was all business as normal, or go running skipping through the field shouting  _I have a Golden Ticket_  - and if he did the second, Scott would probably think he was insane, and would definitely not let Stiles hit him anymore.

Eventually Scott dropped to his knees. He hunched forward over his thighs with his head nearly on the grass, tied arms straight behind him. It was so perfect, such a textbook response, that it took everything Stiles had to not pull out his own phone and take a picture. Then Scott started groaning. Stiles' mind went to the crazy place where Scott was loving this as much as he was, and he thought for a brief moment that Scott was coming, untouched except for the impact of the lacrosse balls. Stiles thought for a even briefer, more infinitesimal moment that he might run over and tell Scott to raise his head, and when Scott obeyed, Stiles would just rub his dick against Scott's cheek until he came in Scott's hair.

That's when the heart rate monitor beeped in warning. Scott's heart rate was 160. He wasn't orgasming; he was freaking out. By the time Stiles squatted and seized the phone, Scott was up to 165 and it wasn't even beeping anymore, it was just a steady blare.

"Scott?"  _Oh, shit._ This wasn't what was supposed to happen. He didn't want Scott's heart to beat out of his chest. He hadn't done this to  _kill_  him.

Scott flexed his arms, and the duct tape tore like tissue paper. He lunged forward, but didn't end up moving further than all fours. He was making more infuriated noises, and Stiles was just about to do something insane in attempt to calm him, like sing lullabies, when the rate dropped. Not a lot, only two BPM, but it was enough to get the monitor back to beeping, not blaring.

Scott dropped onto his stomach and Stiles immediately scuttled forward. He hovered his hand over Scott, pulling it back then stretching it out again, not sure if Scott would want to be touched. "Scott? You started to change."

"From anger. But it was more than that," Scott broke off to pant, like it was old times and Scott was dying after a flight of stairs. Stiles reflexively reached for the inhaler he kept on him, before the current situation reminded him it wasn't needed. "The angrier I got, the stronger I felt."

"So it is anger, then. Derek's right."

Scott's face was devastated. "I can't be around Allison."

That made no sense. "What, because she makes you happy?"

"Because she makes me weak."

Stiles helped Scott to his feet, shaking his head. "Dude, that thing she makes you, it's not  _weak._  It's -" He rolled the word  _submissive_  around in his mouth as they walked back toward the school. It was another word he'd never said aloud to anyone, though from the reading he'd done online, he was pretty comfortable applying it to himself. "It doesn't feel bad, does it? When you're around her, and she, you know. Handles things?"

Scott was staring at him like Stiles was speaking another language. "No," he said, after a long pause.

"You like having her there, right?"

He pushed open the door to the locker room, holding it open. "Stiles, I can't be all relaxed and happy and mellow if the Alpha is coming after me. I have to be -"

"Yeah, the big bad wolf."

Scott's glare was pretty ineffective, but Stiles got the point. "Fuck you," Scott added, just to make it clear.

"Hey, you do what you have to do, right? All right, so you stay away from her for a few days. You can do that."

"But is it a few days or is it forever?"

Stiles crossed his arms, squirming in annoyance. "You know, this whole  _women make you weak_ thing is a little too Spartan-warrior for me. It's probably just part of the learning process."

"Yeah, but you've seen Derek. I mean, the guy's totally alone. What if I can never be around her again?"

The idea fell somewhere between disappointing and terrifying. Stiles tried to tell himself that was because Allison was his friend now, too, and having to keep playing this avoidance game while remaining her friend was already wearing on him. He didn't dwell on half-formed ideas and concepts about what might be possible, however unlikely. "Well, if you're not dead, that could be a good thing."

Scott bowed his head, slumping against the locker. "I'd rather be dead."

"Look, you're not going to wind up like Derek. All right? We'll figure it out."

Stiles led them out of the locker room, chattering about the rancid smell of it on the way. Of course it smelled bad, he couldn't think of words more applicable than Scott's rotting. He happened to know that the girl's wasn't much better; one of the first detentions he ever got in grade seven was for sneaking into the girl's.

"It's like fifteen until Econ. Do you wanna just sit in front of the door, or..."

"Can we go to the caf, first? Since you made me toss my lunch so you could throw stuff at me."

Stiles shook his finger at Scott, old granny style. "Don't even try that with me. We left the caf at the end of the lunch period. I had time to eat everything  _I_ brought. If you didn't eat your gross peanut butter banana sandwich, it's because deep in your soul you know it's unnatural and wrong."

At least Scott was smiling again. "Hey, you give me crap about my great sandwiches, and I won't share my fries with you."

They ate on the way to Finstock's classroom, not bothering to talk around full mouths. The recycled cardboard container went in the garbage across the hall instead of next to his desk, because although Finstock's opinions were mercurial and his hot button issues changed hourly, he frequently flew into a rage about his team eating unhealthily.

Scott balked and took cover behind an open locker when he saw Allison approaching the classroom from the other direction. Stiles watched her notice him, then zero in on Scott's "hiding place," and finally continue on with nothing more than a friendly smile for Stiles. They followed behind her to find a seat.

Scott gestured wildly at the desk behind him, but Allison gave Stiles such a look that all he could do was back away and let her have it. He shrugged helplessly at Scott.  _What can I do,_  the shrug said;  _she's calling the shots._

But Allison didn't act like she was calling the shots when she spoke with Scott. She acted like just another ordinary teenage girl, flirting with her boyfriend.

"I switched lab partners," she told him.

"To who?"

"To you, dummy. This way I have an excuse to bring you home to study." When he didn't respond, her smile fell away, leaving a tentative, almost scared expression. "You don't mind, do you?"

"I just... I don't want to bring your grade down."

"Well, maybe I can bring your grade up."

Stiles had to roll his eyes at that one. He'd been trying to bring Scott's grades up, to no avail, since grades had begun to matter.

"Come over to my place tonight. 8:30?"

Scott held his breath. "Tonight?" he echoed.

"8:30."

It didn't sound like she was giving him much of a choice. Stiles was already nodding in response,  _yes, yes, I'll do that -_ only the invitation wasn't for him. He turned it into an awkward stretch.

And then Finstock, in a spectacular display of bad timing, proceeded to ream Scott a very special new orifice for not doing the reading the night before. Stiles had to remain silent, because if he started in on the witty repartée with the Coach, he'd only make it worse for both of them. He was a little surprised that Allison also refrained from engaging with him, but then he remembered the deep doo-doo she was already in for skipping an entire day of school. Stiles himself had skipped innumerable days, and so far the worst his dad had done was give him a stern talking-to.

When the gauge started dropping, Stiles thought at first it might be broken. There was no reason for Scott to suddenly be so much calmer. And then he saw Scott glance over his shoulder at Stiles, his face placid and his eyes serene. He spotted Allison's hand linked with Scott's under the desk. She was rubbing the side of his finger gently with the edge of her nail. Seeing that connection made his heart do complicated flips and side-rolls.

 _I know just how that feels,_  he thought. Allison's hand on him; the murmur of her voice; her confidence in him, buoying him up when he felt like he couldn't do it himself. Allison was giving Scott exactly what he needed, and watching it happen felt like the biggest gift he could imagine, almost better than getting it himself.

When Finstock finally let them go, two minutes after the bell, Stiles waited while Scott slowly gathered his books and stuffed them into his backpack. Allison made brief eye contact with Stiles before leaving them to talk in relative private.

"The Coach was in rare form today," he said. Scott nodded. His face was still calm, but he was starting to emerge from the trance Allison had put him in. Stiles touched his arm gently, watching Scott notice the contact. "You okay?"

"Sure," Scott said. "Yeah. I'm okay. I mean, maybe I shouldn't be? But... I am."

"It's her."

Scott looked around himself in confusion. Yep, it was still adorable. "What do you mean?"

"It's Allison. Remember what you told me about the night of the full moon? You told me you were thinking about her. And the night of the first lacrosse game? You said you could hear her voice out on the field. Well, that's what brought you back so you could score. And then after the game, in the locker room, you didn't kill her - at least not how like you were trying to kill me." Stiles wasn't sure if Scott would appreciate the word  _dominant_  applied to Allison in this context, but all he could think about was a little puppy Scott, following happily at Allison's heels as she coaxed him away from distractions and dangers. "She brings you back," he said at last.

"No, but it's not always true," Scott said. "Because any time I'm kissing her or touching her -"

"No. That's not the same. When you're doing that, you're just another hormonal teenager thinking about sex."  _Because you don't get off on that stuff like I do. Because you don't want her to be in control when you're making out._ He sighed as Scott's eyes went misty. "You're thinking about sex right now, aren't you? Okay, that's fine. Back in the classroom, when she was holding your hand - that was different. I don't think she makes you weak; I think she helps you let go of your need for control. She's like an anchor."

"You mean, because I love her."

"Exactly." Stiles snapped his mouth shut on the rest of his sentence just in time, because oh my  _freaking_  god, Scott didn't need to hear him say  _I love her too._  Meanwhile, Scott was looking like he'd been poleaxed.

"Did I just say that?"

"Yes," Stiles sighed, "you just said that."

"I love her?"

 _Please, Scott, just let it go._ "That's great. Now, moving on -"

"No, no. Really." Scott did the opposite of letting it go, which was to grab Stiles' arm and look at him full in the face, his eyes shining with revelation. "I think I'm totally in love with her."

"And that's beautiful. Now before you go off and write a sonnet, can we figure this out, please? Because you obviously can't be around her all the time." Stiles danced restlessly from foot to foot. He needed to calm down, and he was pretty sure Scott wasn't going to let Stiles lob more lacrosse balls at him. Scott watched him curiously.

"So what do I do?"

"I don't know. Yet."  _Fuck._  How had this happened? This was bad. This was worse than bad. Because even Stiles knew the last thing a nice guy should do is fall for his best friend's girl. He couldn't tell  _anybody_  this, least of all Allison.

"You're getting an idea, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he lied. Okay, he could do this. He just needed something else to raise Scott's heart rate, preferably something that didn't involve himself getting off on hurting Scott. He wondered if he could order Scott to throw himself off the roof. Then he remembered the kids who always hung out by the east parking lot playing dice. He was pretty sure it wouldn't take much to piss  _them_  off.

"Is this idea going to get me in trouble?"

"Maybe."

Scott squinted at him. "Is this idea going to cause me physical pain?"

"Yeah, definitely. Come on."

He hoped Scott wouldn't ask who he was texting as he walked.  _ **Your boy sure was grateful you were there to hold his hand in econ.**_

 _ **I was glad to be there,**_ she replied.  _ **It's the best thing ever to help like that.**_

_**He wasn't nearly so grateful when I was hitting him with lacrosse balls.** _

_**Are you going to explain why you were doing that? Or what the duct tape was for?** _

_**I told you, I'm convincing him you're not bad for him. And it seems to have worked, partly.** _

_**That's really good news. I spent my free period sitting in the hallway getting hit on by Jackson Whittemore.** _

_**That doesn't exactly sound pleasant.** _

_**No, especially because he was basically creeping on me to get to Scott. I think he was suggesting a three-way.** _

Stiles couldn't help make a noise when he read that, but Scott seemed distracted enough that it didn't matter.  _ **That's not necessarily creepy.**_

_**A three-way with Jackson? Yes. Yes, it is.** _

He wanted to say  _no, a three-way with somebody else_ , but Scott was right there and he just wasn't going to go there. He wasn't. Crap, yes he was. How many times could one person get sent to hell, anyway? _ **Because of Jackson or because of the three-way?**_

"What are we doing?" Scott asked. Stiles stuffed his phone into his pocket.

"You'll see." They'd rounded the corner to where the underage gamblers were loitering. There were seven or eight in at Beacon Hills High. Statistically, Stiles thought come their ten year reunion, five would be in jail, two would be living on their mom's couch with deep debts, the kind that made you run and hide from guys named Vinny, and one would be ridiculously rich.

Stiles got Scott to pose for him for the second time in almost as many hours. It was surprisingly only a little less hot for the actual position being so much less erotic.

"Now, whatever happens, just think about Allison. Try to find her voice like you did at the game. Got it?"

Scott didn't answer but for a worried nod. The not-nice, attracted-to-Derek part of him didn't appreciate the way the nod moved Scott's previously still body. Stiles let his impulse take over, and readjusted Scott's arm, pushing him further into position while repeating the command: "Don't move." Then he walked forward until he was at the truck parked beside the curb, and keyed the shit out of it, from front wheel to back.

Stiles gave himself a brief moment to enjoy Scott, mouth wide with shock but otherwise still perfectly still, just the way Stiles had left him. Then Stiles shouted, and watched as one of the four of the guys - all of whom had been playing craps against the side of the school, like they were in 1970's New York, what the fuck - jogged forward.

"What the hell!" the guy shouted, immediately before punching Scott in the face.

"Oh!"  Stiles winced.  "My god. Wow!" The plan had counted on the gamblers being overly aggressive, but there was a big, big difference between predicting the reaction, and seeing someone whale on Scott for the first time since elementary school.

Scott staggered with the hit, but didn't fall. Then he turned and tackled the gambler in the white jacket. The guy turned the move around immediately, throwing Scott half into the air. Scott went down, just in time for White Jacket and Black Padded Jacket to seize him by the legs and drag him back.

At that point it was four on one. Stiles clenched Finstock's phone so hard his knuckles might be turning white, not that he was about to look away to check. The monitor was still beeping steadily. Stiles muttered a mantra of  _stay calm, stay calm,_  not sure if he was talking to Scott or himself. He was definitely conflicted. This entire situation was very conflicting. Scott looked good being taken down, even if was a horrible thought for a friend to have. A good friend would run in and try to stop this, or at least make it four vs two, but Stiles couldn't. This was happening for a reason. He was being a better friend by helping Scott in the long term, not the short term, right? He wasn't just being selfish, because Scott wanted this too. Right?

Only a small part of Stiles was envious not to have a turn beating on Scott, himself. That wasn't the big deal, though. It had been fun, but he'd gotten a chance this morning. No, Stiles was  _envious_  of Scott, getting to be prone on the grass, struggling as a group of hot guys loomed over him, doling out pain. That, above anything else, was why Stiles couldn't rush in. Because Scott was fighting back. If Stiles was being honest with himself, he wasn't sure how much he would have.

The monitor was up to 130 the next time Stiles could bring himself to look away from the personalised porn in front of him. High, but not dangerously so, if working on the scale they'd used on the lacrosse field. It hovered there for a minute, before starting to go down. It had to be working, Scott had to be tuning into Allison.

Out of nowhere, Mr Harris rushed in to ruin the day. "Stop! Stop it right now." The gamblers fled, but Mr Harris didn't offer Scott a hand to stand up, only continued glaring. "What do you idiots think you're doing?"

Scott's groan was his answer. Stiles didn't have anything to contribute but waggling the monitor, proudly proclaiming 68, at Scott.

"Who were you fighting with?"

Scott shrugged. He probably knew, but he wasn't a rat. Stiles, on the other hand, had no problem throwing strangers -or acquaintances or friends, for that matter- under the bus if need be. "Gambling kids."

"Which gambling kids?" Harris asked acidly.

At that Stiles had to mimic Scott and shrug. He didn't really know any of them personally. They were all the Jackson type; hot, violent, and rich enough to literally throw money around. Not the kind of person Stiles willingly spent time with.

"Well, I need names to assign detention. Lucky for you two morons I'm attentive in class."

With positively Herculean effort, Stiles refrained from pointing out that Harris was a crappy teacher who only knew his students names in order to pick on them specifically. That sort of comment would leave him a week of detention, and one was quite enough, thanks.

Scott's nose was still bleeding when Mr. Harris brought them back to the chemistry lab. The dick didn't tell him to go to the nurse, or even plunk a box of tissues on the table in front of him. Stiles managed to fire off a brief text to Allison explaining what had happened before he was required to put his phone away. At least now she wouldn't worry.

"Excuse me, sir," Scott said in his ultra-polite Scott voice. "I know this is detention and all, but I'm supposed to be at work, and I really don't want to get fired."

Harris just gave Stiles a bitter  _too bad, sucker_  smile and went back to his paperwork. Scott slumped against the lab bench in defeat. He glanced over at Stiles.

"You knew I would heal."

"Yep."

"So... you did that to help me learn?"

"Yep."

"... and partly to punish me."

"Yeah." Stiles' response came out as a muffled gasp. Because, yeah, it had been half-discipline, half-punishment, but... Scott didn't mean it like that. He didn't. Did he? Stiles stole a tiny glance back at him. "That was obvious."

"Dude." Scott tapped his pencil resolutely against his palm. "You're my best friend, and I can't have you being angry with me."

Stiles engaged his hand in something other than reaching out to touch Scott, because that would be completely uncalled for and embarrassing. He ended up rubbing his mouth. "I'm not angry with you anymore."  _Fuck, I don't know what I am._  "Look, you have something, Scott." He went ahead and let Scott think he was talking about the wolf business, even if it wasn't that at all. What Scott had, with Allison, that was just as significant, maybe more. "Okay? Whether you want it or not, you've got something that most people could only dream of. And that means you don't have a choice anymore. You have to do something."

"I know," said Scott, his voice sober. "And I will."

Stiles couldn't look Scott in the eye. He thought he might come right out of his own skin if he couldn't fucking  _move,_  right fucking  _now,_  but luckily he never found out whether or not that was the truth because Mr. Harris said, "All right, you two. You're out of here."

Stiles scrambled to his feet, stuffing his book into his bag. "You're going over to Allison's tonight?"

"I think so. I mean... I have to tell her." He shrugged at Stiles. "Tell her how I feel, you know?"

"Yeah. Good idea. You do that, man." Stiles reached over from a safe distance and patted him on the shoulder. "Let me know how it goes."

Walking out to his jeep through the parking lot scattered with cars felt a little surreal. It wasn't the exhaustion of being called to manage Scott's confusion all day. He didn't really mind that. It wasn't even the hard-on he'd been dealing with since that afternoon; that, he was used to.

He picked up his phone to send Allison a text, but let his hand fall back to his side. What was the point? She didn't need to hear what he had to say, not when Scott was on his way over. She had the right to have the kind of relationship she wanted, just like Scott did.

 _Just like you don't,_  said the hateful voice in his head, thinking of the way Allison had smiled at him that morning, the smile that had eliminated every doubt that she could take care of him. He turned the ignition roughly, grasping the steering wheel as he accelerated out of the parking lot.  _You don't get something like this. Nice guys finish last, and that's the way it should be. Scott deserves that._

* * *

<http://youtu.be/0fJdUcG0ejQ>

_hold tight the night is getting longer  
_ _count down, i feel it getting stronger  
_ _break free and lose your self-control  
_ _just light the fuse and let it go_

_get up, get up, let's get started  
_ _go on, go on, we're gonna throw it down  
_ _get up, get up, it's what you gotta do  
_ _get up, get up, let's get started  
_ _go on, go on, we'll lift it off the ground  
_ _or reach up high, and touch the sky_

_rewind the trouble that you're facing  
_ _get back the dreams that you were chasing  
_ _open your eyes and you will see  
_ _that it's time, we're gonna set you free_

_stay tough, the situation calls for more than ordinary men  
_ _it's you, you gotta make it something no one else would understand  
_ _break through, don't give in  
_ _something better's on the other side  
_ _eyes open wide_

_\- Nick Nolan, "Get Started"_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This appears to have turned into a Stiles/everybody story, but I think you can be sure that Derek will continue to play a part as time passes. In the meantime, if you can't abide the idea of Stiles in a reasonably happy D/s relationship with Allison, you might want to pass, because I can definitely see that happening. Likewise, if the nebulously snuggly Stiles/Scott bro-ship offends you, please look elsewhere for your storyline. Teenage sexual negotiations are not always clearly defined, so we are not pretending this will be simple. Warning in this chapter for said negotiations, mostly tame at this point.
> 
> -amy and gala

 

Stiles didn't stay mired in self-pity for very long. That was one of the best things about ADHD: he couldn't focus on any one thing long enough to perseverate about it. He went home and warmed up a frozen burrito and sat in front of the television for some mindless relaxation before doing the minimum amount of econ necessary to get an A. It wasn't too hard to concentrate on work. But when his phone chimed with a text, he paused immediately. It was Allison.

_**We need to talk. Can you come over, or am I going to sneak out?** _

There was no question about what his answer would be to that.  _ **I can come over.**_ Stiles was not going to let Allison put herself at risk for him.  _ **What happened?**_

_**Too complicated for text. See you soon.** _

That didn't bode well. He took his bike rather than risk getting caught driving after curfew.

Allison met him on the sidewalk in front of her house. She didn't look angry, but she wasn't smiling, either.

"You said you thought I was good for Scott."

"I did. I mean, I do. You are." He gestured violently at her:  _here, have all the Scott you want._  "Didn't he tell you how he feels? He said he was going to."

"He did. He told me." She directed her gaze at the sidewalk. Stiles felt his stomach losing the battle with gravity.

"Oh, god. You don't love  _him?"_

Allison's eyes snapped up. "No! No. I do." She laughed, a bitter sound. "I do love him. Probably more than I should, considering... what a nice guy he is."

Stiles had to grin at her. "I really understand that feeling." He took a step toward her, reaching for her arm, but she didn't reciprocate, and he gave up trying to initiate contact. It wasn't about him, anyway. "So what's the problem? You told him, he told you. Love and kissing all around. That's good, right?"

She turned back toward the house, walking slowly. He joined her, though he didn't link arms with her the way he had in the hallway that afternoon.

"It's good," she agreed. "There was kissing. But when he told me, I had to tell  _him."_  She pushed open the garage side door, letting him in before her.

"I still don't get what's wrong with telling him you love him."

It was dark in the garage, with just enough moonlight coming through the windows to illuminate the shapes of Allison's parents' cars. She shook her head, her curls limned in silver. He couldn't see her face.

"I'm not talking about telling him I love him. I'm talking about you."

He stopped walking. He wasn't going to panic. "What did I do?"

"You didn't do anything. It's this... thing that's happening."

"What thing?" Okay, maybe he was panicking a little bit. Allison, meanwhile, wasn't pausing in her passage into the house toward the warmly-lit kitchen. At that moment, Stiles didn't think he could face the light. No, he was going to stay right here in the nice safe dark. He shivered.

"Are we friends, Stiles?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course."

She was in the doorway now, her face still in shadow. "I don't think anybody could look at what we're doing and say this is an ordinary friendship. Could you?"

He closed his eyes for just a moment. "No, but... don't tell me that matters to you?"

"It doesn't matter to me. I thought it might matter to Scott."

 _Oh god. Oh, god._  "You told him? What did you -"

"Stiles." She reached out her hand. "Come on."

He picked his way across the floor like it was littered with land mines. When he clutched her fingers, he was certain he was squeezing them hard enough to hurt, but she didn't complain.

"Your dad," he began, but she shook her head.

"They're at the symphony tonight. My aunt's the only one here. She won't interrupt us."

He stood up a little straighter, trying to recover what was left of his dignity, and tried again. "What did you tell him? Not like there's anything to tell."

Allison didn't even bother to respond to that comment. She just led him up the back staircase to her room. The closer they got to her bed, the more panicky he felt, until he had to stop and dig in his heels, holding up both hands in resistance.

"Wait, I - I can't do this. Really."

It would have been a perfect time for her to say something sarcastic and cutting, like  _what, I thought you said there was nothing to tell?_  But Allison didn't say anything like that. What she did say was almost more terrifying.

"You need this."

"I need a whole  _shitload_  of things I'm not going to get." When she reached for his other hand, he pulled away, one eye on the door. "And, okay, maybe I'm never going to be in the running for Mr. Congeniality, but - fuck, I am  _not_  going to cheat on my best friend."

"You're not cheating, Stiles," she said, and her voice was firm and kind and she wasn't being mean or anything, and that was just too much for Stiles to deal with. He took off down the hall, shedding Allison's warmth as he went. He didn't deserve it.

The worst thing was how much he wanted to run back in there, to crawl into her bed and let her hold him and defuse his anxiety, as though she was Aunt Beast from  _A Wrinkle in Time_. He hadn't even realized how much he wanted it until that moment. It was enough to cause him to stumble on the stairs, to collide with the bumper of Mr. Argent's car as he retraced his steps to his bike. He wanted it, yeah - but that wasn't enough for him to do that to Scott. He wasn't even going to be bitter about Scott getting the girl, because Allison was just that awesome. They both were.

Stiles managed to take enough time to prop his bike up safely behind the rain barrel. His dad was probably asleep, or possibly drunk, so he didn't even bother to climb in through his window; he just used his key to open the front door.

The house was pleasantly dark. He settled down in the center of the couch, trying to calm his own heart rate, and let out an hysterical laugh.  _No Allison to calm me down. Maybe I should have somebody throw lacrosse balls at me. Or kick the crap out of me._

Stiles wasn't exactly sure how much time had passed before he heard the voice in the front hall. "Stiles?"

"Yeah," he said. It wasn't his dad. Then he realized who it was, and he looked up. "Scott?" He also realized it was kind of a stupid question. After all, who else would it be?

"The door was open." Scott was moving slowly and carefully toward him, like he was afraid Stiles might take off.

"Yeah, I guess I forgot to close it." He started to stand up, then gave up and sat back down right where he was. Thinking about what he'd done to Allison was bad enough, but he wasn't sure he could deal with telling Scott about it. Scott sat down on the other end of the couch, a safe distance away. "Was Deaton mad at you for being late for work after detention?"

"No, it was okay." Scott cleared his throat. "Uh, Allison... she called me, after you left."

Stiles nodded. "I guess I should apologize for making you come out here in the middle of the night."

"It's not that late. She was pretty freaked out, though. Did you turn off your phone? She tried to call you, like, eight million times."

"I didn't mean to." Stiles patted his pockets, feeling no phone. "I didn't even think about it. Maybe I left it in my room after Allison texted me?" The content of that conversation filtered back into his consciousness, and he looked away from Scott. "You don't have to be talking to me, you know."

Scott shook his head impatiently. "I'm not angry, okay? Whatever you think is going on here, that's not it." He edged a little closer to Stiles on the couch, still far enough away that there was no chance of their knees accidentally brushing. "She told me what you guys were doing."

"Yeah?" He wasn't sure what to do about Scott's comment about not being angry. He felt like he should flinch away from him being this close. "I know I should apologize for that, too, but I don't think I can. I'm just going to have to stick with being the asshole."

"You're not an asshole either. Okay, maybe I don't exactly get what you guys were trying to do, but... whatever, you know? I don't have to be the authority on... everything." He made an impatient fluttery gesture with his hand. "Sometimes I feel like there's more I  _don't_  know than I  _do_  know. So is this thing about, you know, what you were telling me this morning? About Derek?"

"Kind of. Yeah, it is, but -" He watched Scott's face in the grainy dimness of his living room. The setting was too familiar, too much a part of both of them for him not to be honest with Scott while he was in it. "It's about Allison, too."

"Yeah, I got that part."

"And you, kind of. You and Allison, what she was doing with you during econ. The way she calmed you down." He paused, and Scott nodded.

"She does that for you, too? Calms you down?" Scott was speaking slowly, like he wanted to get it right.

"Yeah."

"I guess there's nothing wrong with that. Is that why you were freaking out at Allison's? Because, really, it's not a big deal."

"It  _is,"_  Stiles croaked. Now he had to look at Scott. He couldn't let him walk away without getting this part, at least. He looked him straight in the eye and kept him there. "It's a  _really_  big deal, okay? Like, big enough that I should have told you this stuff in sixth grade but I didn't have words for it, and I feel really, really guilty about that."

Scott looked stricken. "Okay? I - I'm sorry. Jesus, Stiles, you don't have to - I mean, I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself."

"Well, you've always been the one I've told everything to. Except I wasn't. I didn't."

"Well, now you did." Scott paused, a little hesitant smile playing around the corners of his mouth. "You did, right? Or is there more to tell?"

Stiles looked at Scott, at his stupid little grin, his patient eyes, and laughed, shaking his head. "Fuck if I know."

"Yeah, I've been telling you plenty for the last couple months. I bet you can't top claws and fangs."

"If you'll recall, I was the one who told  _you_  about those," Stiles pointed out. He thought this might be a perfectly appropriate time for a hug, but he wasn't sure if Scott would agree. He wondered about it for about five seconds before sighing and telling himself  _fuck it,_  and went for it. After a startled moment, Scott hugged him back.

"So, anyway," Scott said, in the midst of the hug, like Stiles wasn't one inch from his mouth, "if Allison can help you deal with your anxiety, I think that's good."

"It's kind of unorthodox," Stiles told him. "The way we do it."

He felt Scott shrug. "It's okay. I mean, I don't think anybody has the right to pass judgment on what other people do, as long as it's not hurting anybody."

He hoped Scott couldn't see his crimson cheeks in the dark. "Um.  _Hurting_  is kind of... a matter of degree? A judgment call?"

"Yeah, all right," Scott agreed. He chuckled, squeezing Stiles' shoulders as he sat back. "Like in the parking lot, how you were kind of helping me and kind of punishing me."

Stiles was almost too astonished to respond.

"Yeah," he said at last. "Yeah, exactly like that."

"So, yeah, I get that." Scott's face was remarkably thoughtful. "I'm really glad you like Allison. 'Cause, you know, she's important to me. I  _want_  you guys to like each other."

The guilt was suddenly back, along with memories of his own erection, bare inches away from Allison's leg, while she held him on her bed. It wasn't unbearable guilt, though. He thought he might be able to deal with it.

"I really do," Stiles said. "I like her a lot. She's... kind of perfect."

Scott's eyes were doing that Disney-soundtrack thing again. "I told her that I loved her. And she said... she said, 'I have to tell you something before I respond to that.' Which wasn't exactly super romantic, but it made me feel kind of glad? That she was thinking about things."

"She does that. The thinking. She's a thinking kind of girl. So, wait, you L-worded her, but she didn't L-word you back because of me? That's not cool, man."

Scott smiled. "Well, we got there eventually. But I think she wanted to make sure I knew this was important to her. Important enough to put my relationship with her on the line. Not like she was saying,  _you have to be okay with this or else._  More like... I don't know." He gazed frankly across the couch at Stiles. "She was saying, this thing with you, it's just as important as what I have with her."

Stiles had no idea what to do with that. It felt like Scott had just wrapped up everything he'd ever wanted and given it to him with a pretty bow on top. There had to be a catch. "And that seriously doesn't weird you out? Make you jealous? Piss you off?"

Scott waited a while before responding. It didn't seem that he was feeling any of those things Stiles had named, but that didn't mean he wouldn't suddenly change his tune. Any moment now.

"I don't think it does. I think there are two reasons for that. One, because she's not saying what she and I have isn't important. She's actually saying it's  _really_  important, and that's - well, that's awesome."

Staring at Scott in the dark was seriously messing with his head. He swallowed. "And the second reason?"

"Because it's you." Scott reached forward and gave Stiles' knee a playful nudge. "You know I want you to be happy, right?"

" _Happy_  might be a matter of degree, too." He knew he suddenly had a big stupid smile on his face, and he didn't care. "That's what I was freaking out about earlier, with Allison. Because I can't accept getting to be happy at your expense. At anybody  _else's_  expense, yes... but not yours."

"Yeah, but it's not at my expense, okay? That's what I'm telling you." Scott grinned back, still teasing. "From what you were telling me, it sounds like  _Derek_  would make you happy."

"Oh my god, no." Stiles groaned, waving Scott away. "And you are never going to say that to me again."

"You said before that you didn't like him because he was sexy-scary. But that's what you want, right?"

"I might possibly want that with someone who's not a psychopath." Stiles made a face. "If we were living in a rom-com, me and Derek's first date would have been me driving him around in a car for five hours. Roadtrip trope, yay. And you know how that ended? Not with a kiss. Hell, not even with, I dunno, a fist, or a spanking, or anything hot. It ended with him demanding I cut his fucking arm off. Allison would never make you cut her arm off."

"I don't really care what you need to do with my girlfriend. But you're not allowed to cut any limbs off."

Stiles shook his head rapidly. "I  _really_ don't want to cut off any limbs. There's a whole list of things I don't want with your girlfriend, and that's one of them. No amputation; no dismemberment of any kind. I don't even wanna get naked with her."

"Stiles?" Scott's eyebrow was pointed right at him. "You remember that werewolves can hear lies, right?"

 _Oh fuck._  Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Stupid. So  _stupid._ If he'd ended his sentence one clause earlier, he would have been in the clear.

"Hypothetically!" The word shot out of him like a cannonball. "Aesthetically! Like I'd want to get naked with her in the way that she is hot, in the way that I'd totally get naked with the substitute teacher we had in Chem last week. Except I wouldn't because age of consent would get her arrested, and I wouldn't with Allison, because she's yours. You know, as much as women can be considered property. I'm pretty sure your mom would kick my ass if she heard me say  _women_ and  _property_  in the same sentence. Oh my god, my mouth, why don't we have any throw pillows so I can smother myself I can't stop -"

Scott reached up and calmly put his hand over Stiles' mouth.

It was possible Stiles' brain was about to explode out of his skull and hurtle through the atmosphere into a supernova.

"Better?" Scott asked, still calmly, like eons of time hadn't passed since he'd touched Stiles.

Stiles nodded his head. Once he did, Scott dropped his hand, patting Stiles' thigh once before taking his arm back altogether. Disappointing. If he'd known that Scott was going to end their contact so quickly, he might have lied and said  _no, it's not better._  He liked to think that he wouldn't have - that he wasn't that selfish, that there was a line between wanting them both and actually forcing himself into their sex lives, and that he could probably tread that line - but it was also probably bullshit.

"Cool, I helped." Scott looked entirely pleased with himself. "Like Allison. I bet Allison's already stopped you talking like ten times." He quirked his head a bit. "Does that mean that I just pulled 'an Allison'? Is that gonna be a thing now?"

"I, uh. I don't know?" Stiles wasn't sure if his words were going to come out right, his brain was so gone. "If you say it a bunch people might start trying to guess what you mean?"

"Good point."

"Scott, can you do me a favor?"

His brow furrowed. "What's up?"

"Can you - and I mean this in the politest of all conceivable ways - go away?"

Now he looked alarmed. "What? But - no, wait I thought we weren't mad!"

"I'm not. We're not. Actually, I'm the opposite of mad right now. It's just been a really long day. I've felt about thirty different feelings today, and I'm exhausted. Honestly, if you don't go home, I think I'm gonna fall asleep right here and drool on your shoulder."

That was sufficient. "Gross, man."

Scott got up and offered his hand. Stiles shook it, feeling the inadequacy of it, then followed Scott to the front door. Yes, Scott had a key. Stiles had stolen the spare one to give to Scott when they were ten. It had taken two impromptu sleepovers for his dad to realize, and he'd never actually asked for it back. Stiles didn't have to help him out, Scott was capable of letting himself out. But making sure your guest didn't trip over the welcome mat and bash their brains in on the way out was the mannerly thing to do.

Scott gave him a little wave. "If you're going to sleep now, you should probably lock the door. Just sayin'."

"Sounds like a plan," Stiles mumbled through a yawn.

Once Scott was gone, Stiles went through all the routine tasks of settling in for the night. Then he lay down, his body sinking into the pillow-top mattress, his blanket draped over him like a full body hug. He yawned again, and closed his eyes.

And he did not fall asleep.

He wasn't typically the guy who lay awake at night, worrying about the people he had wronged during the day. He wasn't nice enough for that. Stiles' life-stance was generally  _do what you gotta do, and don't hurt your friends unnecessarily._

That second clause was what was keeping him awake. He'd walked out on Allison. In fact, he'd basically been a complete shit to Allison, flaking on her when she was trying to be serious and brave and caring. This situation was not conducive to sleeping.

Stiles dug around for his phone, then sent Allison a text. It still wasn't actually all that late, but if she was already asleep, he didn't want to disturb her.  _ **You'd be within your rights to tell me to fuck off, but I want to tell you I'm sorry for what I did.**_

The response came immediately.  _ **I'm sorry too. What I did was way too pushy.**_

 _ **No,**_ he said, before he could think about it.  _ **Not pushy enough.**_

There was a pause, during which Stiles lay on his side, chewing on his lip and waiting for - something, anything. One word would be enough.

When his phone chimed, he was on his feet before he even read what she'd written. He smiled when he did.  _ **I don't think it's my style to say "get the fuck back here," but I could be wrong.**_

_**I don't care if it's your style or not. It's totally working.** _

_**You are very good for my ego.** _

By now Stiles had stuffed his feet into his sneakers and unlocked the front door again. He made it halfway down the steps before retreating inside to get his key - because hell, he had a car, he didn't need to ride his bike - and made what was probably too much noise accelerating backwards down the driveway into the street. He made himself drive slowly, and only texted her back at the stoplights.

_**Just being honest. I promise I will be honest as often as possible. For example, scott made me agree not to attempt to amputate anything from your body. I'm completely okay with that.** _

_**I'm so relieved to hear that. Any other true confessions I should know about?** _

He had to think about it. There were all kinds of things he could tell her, but she'd asked for a confession. That meant he had to give her something real.

 _ **I lied to Scott about not wanting to get naked with you,**_ he typed slowly.

_**What a completely pointless lie to tell. Obviously untrue, and not even meaningful, considering you're sixteen.** _

It thrilled him beyond reason that she didn't add the clause "and a guy" to that declaration.  _ **So you know what sixteen year olds want.**_

_**I know what I wanted when I was sixteen. The rest of the sixteen-year-old world, I'd have to ask.** _

At least he had enough sense not to make a loser "older woman" comment.  _ **Are you asking?**_

There was no response while he parked a couple blocks away, making sure to choose a zone without neighborhood parking restrictions. If Stiles was going to get Allison in trouble, it sure as hell was going to be for something more meaningful than this.

He waited by the side garage door. Her next communication came in the form of the door opening, so apparently that had been the right move. Stiles slipped inside and shut the door behind him.

"You could have a fake rock with a key, or something," he said. When he heard his completely stupid, idiotic idea echoing in the garage, he considered slipping right back out again.

She stepped in front of him and smiled. "I was just going to give you a key. You'll have to memorize the security code, too."

Stiles wanted to say something about not having anything worth stealing at his house, but luckily he realized that was even stupider, because what, were all those police files his dad brought home available for public consumption or something? "I think I can handle that," he said instead. "I have a pretty good memory."

"I have no doubt. It's 3194." She reached out her hand and held it there. Offering, not taking. "Want to try this again?"

He clasped it. "Yeah. Thanks. I'm sorry."

"You think you might run away this time?" There wasn't even a hint of reproach in her tone. She was just asking, gathering information.

"I'm going to try really hard not to," he said. She nodded, apparently satisfied.

"Maybe if you feel like running, just tell me."

He followed her up the stairs, not letting go of her hand. "And you'd... what?"

"Do I have to tell you that in advance? I don't exactly know what I'd  _do,_  but at least then I'd know how you feel. Friends talk about their feelings."

"Since when?" Stiles snorted. "Maybe girls do."

" _We_ do," Allison said decisively. "You and me."

"Okay." He wasn't inclined to argue with her when she said things like that.

The bed didn't loom nearly as large as it had earlier that evening, but the fact that Allison had already pulled back her covers led him to sit on her desk chair instead. He watched with mounting uncertainty as she unzipped her hoodie and ditched it on the floor. That left her in yoga pants and a ribbed blue tank top, under which he was absolutely positive she was not wearing a bra.

"Um," he said. "Is this one of those times I'm supposed to talk about my feelings?"

She thought about it, then shook her head, beckoning him toward the bed. "In a minute. This first."

Stiles tried to notice his resistance with objectivity, the way his dad had taught him to assess a crime scene.  _You're not doing anything wrong,_  he told himself.

 _Yet,_  his not-nice self responded.  _Just stick around._

But he made himself get up and go to the bed, toeing off his shoes and socks. He hoped his feet didn't smell. Allison was waiting expectantly, her legs half-tucked under the thick comforter. He indicated the space beside her. "You want me... in there?"

"Do you mind?" she asked. "I was already in bed when you texted me."

It was a day of confessions. What was one more? "I don't mind, but this is the first time I've done anything like this with another person, other than Scott, and he doesn't count. It feels kind of... heavy."

She paused, looking uncertain for the first time since he'd arrived. "First times are important. I'd understand if you'd rather not have this first time be with me."

"That's not - no. I don't care about that." Stiles was climbing up onto the bed even as he spoke, because he didn't want to have  _anything_  to do with putting that look on Allison's face. "I'm okay with it being with you, as long as you're okay with it being heavy?"

She smiled, moving the covers aside to make room for him, then inviting him to scoot in closer. He could feel the depressions on the sheets where her body had warmed the bed, but her skin through the thin cotton of her pajamas was infinitely warmer.  _Hotter._  There was no denying it. Whatever lies he'd tried to tell Scott to reassure him didn't mean a damn thing in the face of Allison's strong, lithe body this close to his own.

But Allison's voice was more compelling still. "Does your dad know where you are?"

"No, he was asleep when I left."

"So you're going to need to go home tonight. Can you lie here with me and close your eyes for a little while? I'll set an alarm."

It seemed completely impossible that he might relax enough to actually fall asleep wrapped in Allison's arms, but regardless, he wasn't going to give up another chance to be here. It helped a little that she seemed to be loving it as much as he was, her hands stroking patterns in his hair while she made little pleased humming noises. He wished he could purr, because there was no other expression of appreciation that would be adequate.

"What else do you want to tell me?" she asked softly.

At her prompt, Stiles felt the words fall out of him, littering the bed with information. "You feel really hot, through your clothes, against my back? It's weird. Not bad weird, just weird; me and my dad run cold. And it's not like I'd get a hug longer than five seconds from him anyway, even if he was warm. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel neglected or anything. He's just not a hugger. That was my mom. For a while, at least."

"Before she left?" Allison asked.

Stiles frowned. "Is that a euphemism? Or do you not know she's dead?"

"Oh, Stiles," Allison said in the tone he'd heard about a billion times before the rest of Beacon Hills acclimated to the idea. He figured he ought to be used to it by now.

"So the second, then. Yeah, when I was eight. Back when I was younger, like preschool, it was all Sunday morning snuggles in my parents' bed and hugs getting picked up from daycare. But then my mom got sick. She had this neurodegenerative disease. It did physical stuff, but it also made her mean. I mean, I get it now, I know how to scroll MedFacts. Don't blame the victim, blah blah, et cetera. But back then it was just her saying horrible stuff, and she stopped hugging, and she started smoking so she smelled bad. And then it got bad enough that she went to the hospice, and eventually it was bad enough that I wasn't supposed to visit her at all anymore. And that's the story of Stiles' childhood."

"Do you not want me to hug you, then? If it gives you bad memories?" Her words said one thing, but the clasp of her arms around him, drawing him tighter against her, said another.

"Nope. Go right ahead. I've got a bunch of good memories, too. The McCall clan is a touchy-feely family. Scott's mom dropped his piece-of-crap dad around the same time that my mom died, so we were the sadsacks that hung out watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reruns and cramming into the same sleeping bag on the weekend. We did a whole bunch of not-crying-because-we're-boys in third grade. That's when I made lifelong enemies with Jackson, because one of the times Scott was not-crying, Jackson laughed, so I crawled under his desk when he wasn't paying attention and punched him in the nuts."

He couldn't see Allison's face, since she was behind him, but she wasn't laughing, like she could tell how important this conversation was to Stiles. "It's really cool that you've had each other that long. I've been to fifteen schools since first grade. I even failed a grade once, because different things were being taught in different semesters in Boise and Miami. And I've gotten really used to quick friendships that don't hurt to let go of."

"I don't think I could let go of him," Stiles murmured. "Even if I wanted to."

"No one will ask you to."

It was good of her to say that. It was even easy to believe Allison wasn't the possessive you're-dating-me-what-do-you-need-friends-for kind of girl, the likes of which were so liberally added into late-night rom-coms. But it wasn't just about her. There was the Alpha to think of too. What if the Alpha made more werewolves? If Scott had a legit Pack, he might not need Stiles. Not to mention Derek. Right now the ass thought a girlfriend was Scott's biggest distraction. What if he moved on and decided friends were useless, or worse? In the locker room Scott had seriously considered the Spartan argument. Would he consider dropping friends too?

"Thanks, Allison," he replied. Even if she wasn't the whole solution, Stiles had a lot more than he thought he'd have, once everyone told the truth. When he closed his eyes to blink, it took him several minutes to open them again.

Somewhere between the next inhale and exhale, he fell asleep.

He woke up to a greying sky and the waistband of his jeans cutting into his stomach. It wasn't his only discomfort. He was hard, dick pushing painfully against the inside of his zipper. For a moment he almost considered apologising to his morning wood, which was used to soft flannel boxers, not metal.

Then the true nature of the situation hit him. At some point in the middle of the night, they'd switched places, so that she was cradled in Stiles' arms, spooned up against her from behind. Less than twelve hours after essentially promising Scott to not cross lines, here he was in bed with Allison, his boner only a few layers of fabric away from rubbing on her ass. This was not happening. This was not  _happening_ to him!

 _Wait... it didn't have to happen,_  he reasoned. _If a tree falls in the forest but no one's around, there's no sound?_ So if he bailed before Allison woke up, she wouldn't have to know he'd apparently spent half the morning rutting against her.

Stiles inched his way out of the bed, moving the mattress as little as possible. Allison didn't stir. Successfully standing was only step one. He had to find his phone in the shadowy light filtering through the blinds, then his socks and shoes, and get downstairs without running into Aunt Kate. He tried his best to ignore his inconvenient physical response as he fumbled around as quietly as he could, and managed to close the door to Allison's room without disturbing her.

It was hard to leave that warm bed. There hadn't been anything bad about sleeping with another person. None of the things he'd been worried might happen had come to pass. His limbs had found places to fit alongside hers, and it hadn't been sweaty or crowded or anything. It had just been comfortable, and more simple than he'd ever expected.

"And then  _you_  had to come up and ruin it," he muttered to his dick. "Yeah, I'm talking to you. Don't you look at me like that."

He hadn't been kidding about having a good memory for numbers. Even though Allison hadn't explained how to use the security keypad, he figured out what to push and disarmed it before making his way through the garage, out the side door and through the neighbor's lawn to where his car was parked. He was grateful for his Jeep, at least, so he didn't have to ride his bike across town with a hard-on. Not to mention it was fucking chilly this early in the morning. He sat inside with the heat on for a few minutes, chafing his hands and replaying last night's events again in his mind. Was Scott going to kill him for spending the night with Allison, considering  _he_  hadn't even had a chance to do that yet? Was he going to revoke Stiles' special friend status with Allison, cut him off cold turkey? Fuck, what if this was the only time this would ever happen? How in hell was he ever going to find someone else to do that with him?

He had plenty of time before he had to be dressed and ready for school, but he wasn't sure he could handle going back to bed alone. Instead, he perched on the edge of his desk chair and employed all of his most ordinary, reliable, non-Allison fantasies while jerking off. Maybe some of them involved an aggressive werewolf throwing him against the wall, but he wasn't looking too closely at the face of the werewolf in question. Regardless, it didn't take long, and then there was showering, and clean clothes and breakfast, and then he was getting back into his Jeep again.

Stiles didn't text Scott or Allison, but it didn't occur to him that he was avoiding either one of them until he saw Allison approaching him in the hallway, wearing an exasperated, quizzical expression. He tried not to run, because he'd promised he would try, but he might have retreated against his locker, hanging on to casual with both hands.

"What the hell, Stiles?"

Stiles felt suddenly overwhelming sympathy for the deer frozen in the middle of the road. Before he'd always cursed at deer crossings, paranoid about how much damage a flying doe could do to his beautiful car, not to mention to the fragile passengers inside. Now, though, he  _was_  the deer, just like John Lennon was the walrus. He was utterly frozen in the headlights of Allison's glare, and couldn't speak to save his life.

"Hadn't we literally just gone through this? It was, like, the second to last thing we talked about before bed. Everything was cool then. Everything was fine. What changed?"

Oh god. He was gonna puke. Now he wasn't the deer, he was the fish, gaping at her with a wordless, open mouth.

Allison was persistent. "If this is going to work, if we're going to keep on doing this, you have to tell me what's in your head. What changed between last night and this morning?"

"Inappropriate erection!" Stiles blurted, loud enough to be heard in the locker room. Half the hallway turned to look at him. No doubt this would be around the school by noon: the ADHD spaz screaming about erections to the hot new girl who was dating a first string lacrosse player. Allison pursed her lips, and Stiles hung his head, his cheeks blazing, preparing for wreck and ruin.

"I think you blew my eardrum," was her unexpected response.

"Sorry. I guess that's why I never stop talking. My mouth has a short term memory when it comes to how to modulate volume."

She stepped in closer to lean on the locker beside him. At least she was smiling. That had to be a good sign. "Stiles, you're smart. Do me a favour. Define inappropriate?"

"Getting one when it's wrong, and there's no reason to have one."

"And would you say that fits for being under the covers with a half-naked girl for the first time, never mind the normalcy of morning wood?"

That kind of logic wasn't sufficient. "Maybe not if I was your boyfriend, but Scott is, and..." He frowned. "And it's  _wrong_!"

"I'll agree that it's nothing that the three of us talked about. But I don't think it's  _wrong._ I'm not shocked or horrified, Stiles. And I wouldn't have been this morning, if we'd woken up at the same time and you had been hard."

"And for another thing, shouldn't Scott be the first one to get to have an erection in your bed? And... what?"

She crossed her arms. That quizzical look was back. "Stiles, do you think  _you're_  the first guy to ever have an erection in my bed?"

"I don't even know." He fumbled for words that weren't going to offend her. She didn't seem offended now, but he was absolutely sure words would come out of his mouth at some point that would, and he really, really hoped it wouldn't be while he was talking about his dick. "I actually just meant between the two of us. Don't you think Scott has dibs on that honor?"

She reached out and rested her hand on his arm. It was still warm. That touch resurrected his body's memory of the rest of her, keeping him toasty all night. He gave his body a virtual stern look, because now was  _not_  the time for  _another_  inappropriate erection.

"I think that's my decision," she said softly. "Don't you think?"

"Your body, your choice, dude. I pay attention in health class. And am also a sane male human, so. It's just really hard to know what the bro-code says in this kind of situation. There's not a lot of media subtext for this. All I know is I don't want to make Scott sad, even if it'll make me happy."

Allison regarded him with astonishment. "Why, Stiles," she said, "that's very...  _nice_  of you."

"Yeah, well, all bets are off when it comes to Scott." He made a face. "If this was about anybody else, I would have said you were insulting me."

"You'd be right. We're not secret BFF's because you're nice. Just, when you're bored in class today, think about how much easier it would be if, instead of being worried about being nice to Scott, you and he simply did what I told you to."

So much for now not being the time for a boner. But...  _secret BFFs._  That counteracted the anxiety provoked by her suggestion to  _think about it._ Because now he might be thinking about doing what Allison told him to do all day, but at least he'd also be thinking about having Allison as a partner in crime.

"I would totally be okay with that," he promised her. "And if you could somehow magically get him to say  _he_  would be okay with that too, I can guarantee I would never complain about it again."

"Yeah." She nodded to herself. "I'll work on that. In the meantime, we're cool, okay?"

"Okay." It was one of those times when she said something and it just  _was,_  without question. It made Stiles shake his head at himself, because since when had he ever accepted anybody's words without questioning them? Like,  _ever?_  He was pretty sure neither his father nor Scott would have been able to come up with a single instance of that happening, if he'd asked.

Stiles didn't have time to avoid Scott before the first bell rang, but Scott and Allison were chemistry partners now, so Stiles didn't have to do more than give Scott a friendly wave before Harris shuffled them into their seats and they were hard at work calculating the molarity of solutions. Sitting behind them, he had the dubious pleasure of watching Scott and Allison talk in an undertone for the entire class. Scott didn't exactly look relaxed, but he also wasn't coming over and punching Stiles in the face, so that was a good start to the day.

Afterwards, Stiles hurried out before Scott could approach him, and made several loops through the hallways to ensure that Scott would get to second period before he did. He knew very well that he was being an idiot about this. The only excuse he could come up with was that if he tried to talk about it at school, he was going to have a fucking heart attack.

Mr. Bergen didn't let them chat much during social studies. Stiles didn't bother sitting across the room from Scott, because he knew they wouldn't be able to talk anyway.

Scott did manage to whisper, "Everything OK after I left last night?" while Bergen was at the board. Stiles hemmed and hawed until Bergen turned around again and gave them a pointed look, and it was within Stiles' rights to just shrug as if to say  _later, what can you do._  He kind of wanted to ask Scott what he and Allison had talked about for an entire fifty minutes in chemistry, but at the same time he was glad he wasn't able to ask.

On their way into Brit lit, Stiles watched Scott and Allison have a little moment together in the hallway, exchanging kisses and nose-nuzzles and all the typical affectionate gestures. It made Stiles smile more than usual, especially when Allison came into the classroom wearing that dreamy Disney expression he'd seen on Scott's face the night before. She slid into the seat behind him.

"So the kissing makes me think he doesn't totally hate you," Stiles said, "and the way he was talking to me in social studies makes me think he doesn't totally hate  _me."_

"Nobody's hating anybody, Stiles."

He shuffled his feet under his desk, feeling the muscles in his neck tensing up. "I think I'm just waiting for all the information to get out into the open. Like, right now, maybe it's okay, but when people get clear about what's  _really_  going on, there's going to be more yelling and throwing things and -"

"Stiles."

For a moment, he thought that word might be Allison telling him to shut up, but it was Mrs Tanner. He leaned back in his seat and let out an explosive sigh. If he could only stand up and move around, he'd be okay, but he was stuck where he was. Maybe he could get away with asking for a bathroom pass, even though Tanner's room shared a bathroom with the classroom next door.

Then he felt something tickling his left hand. He twitched away from it, glancing behind himself - and saw Allison's eyes on him. It was  _her_  hand, touching him under the desk. She stroked the edge of his hand again, and this time she interlaced his fingers with hers and held them tight.

While his mind was making excited gibbering noises, Stiles discovered he felt much calmer holding Allison's hand. He didn't let go all through the first half of class, and when Tanner called him up to recite a passage from  _Canterbury Tales,_  he found he was more than willing to stand on his own for a little while. She smiled at him proudly when he returned to his seat.

"Did you bring your lunch today?" she asked.

"I barely remembered my backpack today. Why?"

She shrugged. "I thought lunch might be a good chance for the three of us to talk, and I know Scott would be more comfortable if we weren't in front of the whole school while we did it."

"I'll provide the transportation off campus if I can eat off someone's plate?"

"I think we can arrange for you to eat your very own food, Bandit. And, considering my last off-campus excursion ended with my dad blowing a blood vessel and getting grounded, I should probably ask: is this school okay with off-campus lunches?"

Stiles frowned and attempted to cast his mind back to the freshman introductory booklets. "I don't...actually know? Me and Scott always eat here. Unless we don't. But I don't remember ever getting a detention for leaving at lunch, specifically. It's generally for skipping or because Harris hates me."

"Good enough for me. I can always try the  _I'm new, I didn't know_  card if someone does catch us." She flashed that quick, wicked smile, the one Stiles was coming to love already. "Anyway, it'd be nice to know that I had the option to disappear with someone for fifteen minutes over lunch."

That put a whole new spin on  _think about it, Stiles._ He wondered how many times during one day he could get turned on before it would become imperative to do something about it. With luck, he would manage to wait until he got home.

Scott didn't seem fazed by the suggestion they go out for lunch, as though they'd done it a dozen times before. Stiles watched Allison propose the idea, saw Scott nod obligingly and take her hand, then turn to Stiles and ask, "My treat today? Your turn next time."

"Sure," Stiles said.  _Sure, this is completely ordinary. It's not anything like a date._  He smothered an hysterical laugh. As though he'd ever go for a nice guy like Scott, anyway.

Stiles didn't ask for much in a restaurant. All he really needed was some sort of fried potato option. From breakfast to dinner, from shredded hash browns to wedge fries thicker than two fingers put together, Stiles would eat it all. So when Scott back-seat drove them to Molly Meghan's Diner, Stiles happily complied. Everything about that place was just fine with him, down to the infusion of colour he got from the staff's bright orange polo shirts.

It was fairly busy at lunch time. The greeter was methodically and efficiently wrapping cutlery in generic white napkins. He barely looked up long enough to peel three menus off the stack and hold them out to Scott before refocusing on the work in front of him.

"Find a table, someone will be right there to take your order," he said, lining up the knife and fork.

There were no tables left, and only a few booths. Stiles halted in front of one, unwilling to continue without some direction. There were a lot of implications inherent in who sat where. He wasn't the only one of the three of them eyeballing the booth, either, proving he wasn't the only one with questions on his mind about exactly what was going on here.

Unsurprisingly, it was Allison who broke the silence. "You two," she said, pointing. "That side."

They slid into the booth, one after the other, while Allison folded her brown leather jacket neatly and set it down beside her.

Scott poked him with the edge of the plastic covered menu. It wasn't like either of them needed to look at it to know what was on it, but since Allison was seeing the menu for the first time, it seemed only right that they look with her. "You want curly fries or crinkle?"

"What's the difference?" Allison asked absently.

Stiles clutched at his chest. "You wound me! Deep in my soul, Allison. Deep deep down."

Scott grinned at Allison. "Stiles takes his potatoes pretty seriously. It's, like, the first thing you should know about him."

"Oh, really? I would have put some other things on the top ten list."

She looked completely calm while she said it, her smile serene, but the comment put Stiles'  _thinking about it_  into overdrive. Scott seemed to pick up on his agitation before Allison did. After the waitress scribbled their orders on her notepad and took their menus, they had nothing to hide behind anymore. He turned to Stiles.

"So, uh. Allison says that you went over to her house last night. After I left."

There was no way he was going to lie to Scott about this, no matter how awkward it became. "Yeah. I couldn't sleep, and when I texted her, she was up. She told me to come over."

Scott glanced at him, leaning in to bump him with his shoulder. "It's okay, man," he said. "Remember how I said I wasn't upset, and told you why? It's still true. Nothing's changed."

"Even though I slept with her?" Stiles winced as Allison tilted her head in amusement. " _In her bed._  I slept  _in her bed."_

"Nothing's changed," Scott repeated stoutly, and sipped his water.

That would have been a reasonable place to leave it, if this had been anybody else but Scott. "Except it has? Because I - you know, I didn't  _do_  anything, except - I didn't  _mean_  to do anything, and sometimes things just - not that I would have  _done_  anything with it -"

"When Stiles woke up this morning, he thought I was hot," Allison explained.

"Uh, yeah? You'd have to be blind, not to." Scott replied. He peeled the top of his everything burger off and started poking for pickles. He always forgot to request they be left off, which left him searching every time he ordered a Big Mac or similar. "Didn't we have this conversation last night, when you tried to lie and I heard - I mean figured it out?"

"Yeah. Sort of. Except last night I saved the day by pointing out it was hypothetical. Now it's..." Stiles wasn't going to finish that sentence for a million dollars. "...not."

Allison made a vague wave with her hand. "When Stiles woke up this morning his dick thought I was hot. Apparently. I only know he's telling the truth because his freaking out seems genuine; I wasn't actually awake at the time."

Scott shrugged. "I don't see much of a difference between thinking she's hot and being attracted to her? I mean, you can jerk it thinking about her too, if you want. Whatever."

"Not really your call, honey," Allison said, smiling sweetly at Scott.

Stiles pushed his plate of curly fries to the side so he could rest his head on the table. The residual heat was comforting against his cheek. "I don't understand how I'm the ADHD kid with no filter, but you're both so..." Yeah, he couldn't finish that sentence either. There was no adjective to cover this situation, Stiles was sure of it.

The table was silent for a moment as Scott gnawed through his foot tall burger and Allison took dainty bites from the edges of her club sandwich. Stiles possibly reached out and picked up a curly fry without raising his head. Difficult life or not, curly fries were a sin to waste.

"So the way I see it," Allison went on, "nothing's changed except Stiles has reached puberty and realised he has a penis."

"Oh my gooood," Stiles groaned. "The only thing Stiles has reached is the point of TMI."

Scott patted his head. "Eat your fries before I decide to put ketchup on them."

"I will cut you!" Stiles hissed, straightening and pulling the plate towards him before Scott could taint them.

"Oooh, look at me," Scott said, ridiculously proud of himself. "I pulled an Allison."

"You did what?" she asked around a mouthful of lettuce and turkey.

"Pulled an Allison. It's when Stiles is freaking out about something and someone calms him down by being all forceful and stuff."

"Huh," she said. She swallowed and quirked a smile. "I like that. A lot, actually."

For an event that was supposed to be all about getting Scott to talk comfortably, there really wasn't much conversation. At least not dirty conversation. Stiles wasn't regretting that though. On the surface Scott and Allison both appeared to be cool with everything that had happened so far, and that meant he was free to daydream about whatever he wanted. Yes, at some point everything would come crashing down. Stiles was a realist at heart, even if he suffered occasional bursts of wild optimism, and realism said that eventually Scott would go possessive cro-magnon, or Allison would somehow be shamed into being nice. Until then, though, Stiles was going to enthusiastically ride on the happy surface. Getting deep was for suckers. He pushed his plate into the center of the table.

"Anybody want a fry?"

* * *

_ <http://youtu.be/HRXSgfw7om0> _

_Her face is a map of the world  
_ _Is a map of the world  
_ _You can see she's a beautiful girl  
_ _She's a beautiful girl_

_And everything around her is a silver pool of light  
_ _The people who surround her feel the benefit of it  
_ _It makes you calm  
_ _She holds you captivated in her palm_

_Suddenly I see  
_ _This is what I wanna be  
_ _Suddenly I see  
_ _Why the hell it means so much to me_

_I feel like walking the world  
_ _Like walking the world  
_ _You can hear she's a beautiful girl  
_ _She's a beautiful girl_

_She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white  
_ _Makes you feel warmer when you're trying to remember  
_ _What you heard  
_ _She likes to leave you hanging on her word_

_Suddenly I see  
_ _This is what I wanna be  
_ _Suddenly I see  
_ _Why the hell it means so much to me_

_And she's taller than most  
_ _And she's looking at me  
_ _I can see her eyes looking from the page of a magazine  
_ _She makes me feel like I could be a tower  
_ _A big strong tower  
_ _The power to be  
_ _The power to give  
_ _The power to see_

_\- KT Tunstall, "Suddenly I See"_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, a chapter with zero canon! Warnings herein for masturbation, sexual negotiation, mild D/s and references to many kinks. Oh, and kissing. 
> 
> -amy and gala

 

Thank god Scott actually did the reading for econ. Finstock was on his ass as soon as the three of them walked through the door, but Scott responded to all his questions without fumbling. Okay, maybe "what you can't do if you use resources to do certain stuff" wasn't exactly the response Finstock was looking for when he asked for the definition of opportunity cost, but it was something, anyway. Stiles and Allison sat at opposite points of the room and grinned at each other through the whole inquisition, and when Scott sat back down in his seat with a relieved sigh, Stiles wanted to cheer.

The three of them split up for fifth hour. Stiles appreciated the breather, not because Scott and Allison together wasn't great, but all the curve balls they'd been throwing at him were making him a little dizzy.  _No, Stiles, this secret you've hung on to for years, it's actually not a big deal. Not only that, but my girlfriend's gonna help you deal with it, and by the way? It doesn't bother me if you sleep in her bed with her. You can even get turned on around her._ Which, as Allison had pointed out, was just one of those things that happened when you were sixteen, whether you wanted it to or not.

But that wasn't what was happening. Stiles wasn't going to use that excuse, mostly because Allison wouldn't buy it anyway. No, he was just plain old attracted to his best friend's girlfriend - and wasn't that about the worst offense one could commit in high school? Worse than plagiarism, or bringing a gun to school, or taping someone naked to the flagpole?

But the weirdest thing was, neither Allison nor Scott seemed to even care about that. How was that possible? Maybe he was just that inconsequential, like he'd never be a threat to either of them. Allison in pajamas, snuggled under her covers, was a formidable presence, while Stiles in the same situation was just laughable. Or possible distasteful.

In the past, Stiles' best defense in this kind of situation had been to keep his mouth shut as best as he could and laugh at himself whenever possible. Humor tended to put people at ease. If he could laugh at himself for being a total dork, other people felt less bad about doing it too. He might as well go back to fantasizing about all the other unattainable people in the world, like Derek and Lydia and Ashton Kutcher. Seriously,  _why_  did he have to be in this situation, where all of a sudden Scott's girlfriend had him on speed-dial and had given him the security code to her house?

By the end of Spanish class, he had resolved to tell her he couldn't come over anymore. He should walk away from this before it got really awful.

It even seemed possible that he might be able to pull that off. Then Allison came up behind him in the hallway on the way to trig and put her hands over his eyes, and Stiles just about leapt out of his skin. He looked over his shoulder at her smile, so disarming, so mostly-harmless, and sighed.

"You sure this is a good idea?" he asked.

She gave it some thought as they walked. "Are you asking me if I think it's the most foolproof plan ever? No. But I'm completely willing to take that risk."

He tried again. "But you love Scott."

"Because I love him doesn't mean I can't have other friends? I can't be close to anybody but my boyfriend?" She took his arm, leaning close. "You want to hear my plan?"

"Please," he begged.

She held up two pinched fingers, like she was aiming a dart. He zeroed in on the space between her fingers. "Take care of the people I care about."

"That's crazy talk!" he stage-whispered, his eyes wide, and she cracked up. "Okay. I'm going to give up on trying to make sense of this whole thing, all right?"

"I tried to tell you." She put a sympathetic hand on his back. "It'll be much easier if you just do what I say."

He had to wonder what Scott's answer to that suggestion had been. Allison was being frustratingly cheerful about everything. He'd feel so much better if Scott would do some very Scott-like worrying, but so far there seemed to be none of that happening.

At least Allison didn't seem to have any trouble switching her attention to school-related subjects when it was necessary. She appeared to be entirely absorbed in graphing circular functions for the entire fifty-minute period, only giving him a single smile in the middle of Mr. Creswell's explanation of the difference between the sine and cosine graphs. Maybe she could tell it helped him to work out some of his energy on intellectual pursuits. Maybe it was like that for her, too. For whatever reason, after drawing half a dozen sweeping wave functions, Stiles felt a little more settled. Maybe this  _would_  be okay after all.

She fell into step with him again as the final bell rang. "Walk with me to Scott's locker?"

Stiles shrugged, heavy backpack not budging an inch with the movement. "Don't see why not. But I gotta go right home."

"Yeah, that's fine. So do I, actually. Scott and I have to study. I'm going to help him boost his marks in geometry."

"You're not studying shit," Stiles accused.

She smirked. "I can see why you'd think that. There are definitely things I'd rather be doing. But no, I do have trig homework, same as you, and Scott is basically drowning in how to find the surface area of random shapes. I'm going to do my best to give him a bailing bucket."

Stiles made a face. It was the face of a man who'd tried to accomplish a task fifty times, and had failed every time. "I wish you luck. Maybe you'll do better helping him than I have. I've tried, but if I'm doing homework I do better working on five different things at once. Keeps me from getting bored and fucking off to Youtube or something. Scott needs a methodical approach, and I suck at that."

"Do you even do homework at home? I bet you do the previous class's when you get bored in your next class."

"You're not entirely wrong."

"Just like Lydia. Jeez, the two of you suck. I get good grades, but I actually have to sit down and do  _work,_  at home."

"Well, if it makes you feel better, when I write essays at home I get lower grades. Last month I wrote an essay about circumcision instead of government subsidies because I got in a blue link spiral on Wikipedia. Finstock was pissed."

She grinned. "That kind of does make me feel better, actually."

Stiles stood beside them at Scott's locker while Allison hung on Scott's waist, just like any ordinary girlfriend would. He wondered if any of the random passers-by could tell that something was different between the three of them. It sure felt like it was different to him, anyway.

"I'll call you later," she said to Stiles before taking off with Scott. Maybe the weirdest part of the whole thing was Scott watching him and Allison be comfortable together. Over the last month, since he'd decided he and Allison should be better friends, that had mostly transpired without Scott's presence - no doubt because he'd been convinced that Scott would go all glowy-red-eyes when he saw Stiles getting friendly with His Girl. It was almost a let-down to have him just smile and wave as they walked away.

By  _go right home,_  Stiles meant he wanted dad-time. There was something about getting a minute with his dad in all his authoritative, vaguely suspicious, often exasperated glory that soothed Stiles. He drove the quickest route to the precinct office, listening on the radio to make sure nothing major was going down. Radio silence was reassuring.

"Hey, Bev," he said as he walked in, keys twirling around his outstretched index finger.

She kept her eyes on her paperwork. "That's Officer Richard to you."

"And next week I'll come in and call you Officer Richard and you'll tell me to call you Bev. You are the very soul of contrariness."

"I'm a Scorpio," she reminded him. Stiles nodded. He knew. Thanks to Bev Richard, he knew the horoscope of everyone in the precinct. "You here for your dad?"

He leaned on the counter on his folded arms, fluttering his lashes at her. "Never! I'm head over heels with you. Every minute I spend away from you, a chunk of my soul dies."

"For the record? 'Chunk' isn't a very romantic word. Try 'smidgen' next time."

Stiles laughed for a second, then feigned shock. "That's definitely worse. You're trying to sabotage me!"

"He's out doing check-ins for some of the regular domestics. Totally above and beyond, that man. This whole town'll go to shit when he moves to follow you to college."

"He better not," Stiles said. "He's too old to join a frat. Who does he think he is, Will Ferrell?"

"Anyway, seeing as I'm absolutely certain you have an illegal pressing of his office key on your keyring, you just go let yourself in. Give his swivel chair a work out until he gets back."

He sniffed indignantly. "I'm not five! Just because you used to office-babysit me..."

"You're not five, you're right. Which means if you spin until you puke that I don't have to clean up the vomit. Oh holy hallelujah." She opened her drawer and plucked out a sucker, then threw at him. Stiles caught it without protest. He didn't have to be five to enjoy candy. Half the precinct had pilfered sweets from Bev's candy drawer at one time or another.

Having free reign in a cop shop - along with an undetermined countdown to getting caught, yes, but still free reign - was an opportunity that should not be missed. Stiles had never sat in his dad's empty office without learning something the average citizen probably wasn't supposed to know. Unfortunately, most of what he cared about right now related to werewolves, and he'd already glanced through all relevant Hale files during parent-teacher conferences.

In the end, Stiles contented himself with pawing through the logs of the last night his dad had been forced to monitor the drunk tank. Ever since that one guy had nearly died in '09, some law or bylaw or something had been changed so that whichever deputy checked the drunks and druggies had to record everything. It wasn't always hilarious, but there were generally one or two lines he could later upload with a fake area code onto Texts From Last Night.

"So nice to see you enjoying yourself," came the voice of his father from the doorway.

Stiles whirled the chair to properly look at him, stomping his foot against the floor before he rotated too far. "I wasn't -"

His dad held up his hand. "Do me the favour of remembering we've been in this situation over a thousand times in the ten years you've been able to read? And I mean literally, the same exact situation. I rolled that chair from my deputy desk to my office when I got promoted."

Ahh. There it was, that familiar calming skepticism and denigration of character. Regardless of what he'd shared during his depressing late night conversation with Allison, at the moment, Stiles didn't need a hug. He needed this. "Right, sorry. I totally was."

"Sit on the floor or sit on my desk, I don't care. But get out of my chair. It's molded perfectly to my behind, and I've been standing for nearly an hour trying to get Mrs Cruise to stop screaming at Mr Cruise. I am done with standing."

Stiles perched on the edge of the desk, first making sure he wasn't sitting on anything that mattered if it was wrinkled or not. Most times it didn't, but occasionally paperwork had to go to the Mayor. "Bev said you were just doing random check-ins?"

Dad settled into his chair with a sigh and smiled wryly. "Turns out, when you just show up at a volatile couple's house, they both rapidly decide the other party called the cops on them."

"Meh. Don't sweat it. It's Friday night, they probably would have ended up calling by the end of the night anyway. At least this way the person getting in the middle didn't have to face them drunk."

"Speaking of, you spending the night here? Not that I mind, as long as all your homework gets done before Monday, and you don't wave any delicious fast food in front of my face - unless you got me a burger too -"

"Never!" Stiles interrupted. "There are literally zero circumstances in which I will be buying you In and Out for dinner."

"You know, Doctor Suresh doesn't even think my cholesterol's that bad?"

"That's because I'm a lone sniper on a mission to blast every drop of fat from your diet! Michael Bay could write a movie about my battle!"

"Anyway. You can stay if you want, but you don't have anything better?"

"What, you want me to go to a kegger that you'll end up breaking up in a few hours, and then all the underage drinkers will blame me and call me a narc, like they haven't been playing LMFAO full blast all night? I need more popularity, not less."

"No, that's not what I'm -"

"And there would definitely be a classic 1990's teen comedy moment where I'm bailing from the back of the house and you're the one standing outside the window catching all those little bastards. I can practically hear the laugh track already."

"Stiles! Focus. Did you take your pill this morning?"

"Yes." At least, he was almost positive he had. And it didn't feel like withdrawal either. He was maybe a little jittery, but it wasn't cranked to eleven the way it was when he accidentally skipped a day.

"I just meant you don't have any plans? No indie downloads with your chat group, that kind of thing?"

"Nope. At least there wasn't any torrent link the last time I checked the forum. And nothing with Scott either. He and Allison are trying to make him not fail geometry. I'll pray for them."

His dad pinned him with a look. "So you're talking to Scott again?"

"Yes. Uh, I mean, when wasn't I?"

"Yesterday, when you were shouting at him on the lawn."

Crap. Stiles had basically forgotten his dad had witnessed that. It had been a busy fucking thirty-six hours. "Well, things are fine. Complicated, but fine."

"That's good. I know he's important to you. Complicated, though? Does it have to do with Alex?"

Who the fuck was Alex? What the hell had he even said the last time he'd seen his dad? The only safe thing to say was "uh."

"Does Scott not like her? I'd say that maybe he liked her too much, but I saw how mad Mr Argent was seeing him and Allison together, so I'm assuming that's a relationship."

"It sure is. And trust me, neither of them give a solitary crap about what Allison's dad thinks. Good on them, Romeo and Juliet-ing it up, right? Except for it ending in the poison and death part. Let's nix that part." Depending on the order in which Allison found out about her werewolf hunting destiny and her actualfax werewolf boyfriend, there very well could still be poison and death, but Stiles was really hoping against it.

His dad regarded him thoughtfully. "Since you're avoiding the conversation so deftly I'm almost not noticing, I'm going to say yes on Alex."

Shit and double shit. Stiles racked his brain for what he might have said yesterday at breakfast and came up with absolutely nothing. It was all a blur of telling Scott about Derek, and then Allison soothing him in the car. But his dad wasn't done.

"And you know, I was thinking about the conversation after I left for work, and Stiles? I couldn't help but notice that before I asked what her name was, you were playing a pretty skilled round of the pronoun game."

"Uh." Abort mission!  _Abort mission!_  There had to be a way to get his dad off this track without making it obvious that he was derailing it. Maybe if he quickly confessed to another easily solved problem with Scott, he'd drop this fake inquiry.

His dad looked uncomfortable, but not shocked or angry. "It's not the first time I've heard it played, you know. I swear, your uncle Marcus only dated men with unisex names for that exact reason. And, yes, I was a little surprised when he came home with Xavier. But I supported him, and so did your mother. It's okay, you know. You can like anyone you want. And if Scott reacted badly, well, he'd better educate himself. I can talk to him if you want."

Okay, now his dad was veering wildly off course. it was too late to abort the probably-pansexual-definitely-bi nature of his mission. But this, at least, had to be stopped.

"Dad, you know I have a good imagination, just as half my teachers since kindergarten have been reporting to you. So the fact that I can't imagine anything more terrible and awkward than you sitting Scott down and telling him 'it's okay to be into dick' should say a lot."

"You've..." His dad cleared his throat with a fake cough. "You've been  _safe_  with those... dicks, right?"

"Oh, sweet Jesus!" Stiles cringed, hiding behind both hands. "Whatever parenting pamphlet told you to use your child's language was wrong. So very very wrong. Never say that again!"

His dad pulled a stern face. "Well, maybe if you didn't use such dirty language, me using it wouldn't sound as bad."

"Or maybe I should just tell you that everything is fine, and normal, and if we talk about this for one more minute I'm going to crawl under Deputy Erikson's desk and cry."

"I still want to meet Alex. Boy Alex. I promise to make vegetarian for dinner."

The nice thing to do in this situation would be to tell his dad that Alex was a construct, a lie to get out of...whatever it had been that he'd made her up for yesterday morning. But clearly the construct had come in handy once. Maybe he could use Alex again to distract his dad from finding out that Stiles was obsessing over Derek Hale, the guy they'd attempted to get arrested. And who was to say it wouldn't be useful to have an excuse for other various behaviour in the coming weeks?

"I'll get on that ASAP," Stiles replied. "He does a lot of volunteering, though. His grades aren't the greatest, and if he gets into a good college it'll be through humanitarian efforts, and having interesting stories to tell in the application essays."

His dad seemed to buy that. Stiles wondered if it should make him feel bad, lying to his dad, but so far he didn't seem to have had the  _sorry_  feature installed at the factory, and that was okay.

The first thing Stiles did when he got home was make a Word doc for everything he'd already bullshitted about Alex. He'd inevitably say more, and it wouldn't do to contradict himself. Dinner and his remaining homework and social networking encompassed the rest of his evening. A good chunk - or was that  _smidgen?_  - of his attention was fixed on Allison and Scott and what they might be doing together, for which he felt only a little bit creepy. Scott had  _told_  him not to worry about being turned on by Allison, hadn't he? It only stood to reason that he could, therefore, not worry about being turned on by other people as well.

It wasn't until Allison sent him a text, reading  _ **We're done here,**_ that he put away his books and turned off his computer and retired to his bed, sans pants. He was absolutely not going to meet up with Allison again without taking at least the edge off of his libido.

_**What's the plan, boss?**_  he replied, after he was finished.

_**I can't get out tonight until my folks are asleep. They're drawing the line at fraternizing with boys unless it's school-related.** _

_**We could come up with a fake project?** _

_**I think I'd rather make it an unscheduled extracurricular visit tonight. I'm having trouble staying focused on anything else.** _

It made his heart beat hard inside his rib cage to read that.  _ **You, too? How'd the geometry go?**_

_**Unbelievable. I'll tell you all about it when I get there. Should I come to the door or meet you somewhere else?** _

Stiles explained about his ground-floor window and the sticky-outy piece of siding behind the privet bush in front of his room.  _ **I'll leave the window open a crack.**_

He made an effort to clean things up, including changing his sheets, because maybe Allison was okay with the way teenage guys smelled, but he didn't want to immerse her in  _eau de Stiles_  on her first visit. Then he took a quick shower, which maybe was overkill, but if part of her intent in coming over involved lying down with him on his bed, he was going to make a goddamn effort to not be offensive while she was doing it.

Finally, he checked on his dad. On weeks like this, when he was on all day shifts, he tended to go to bed early and sleep hard. Sure enough, he was breathing slowly and regularly when Stiles paused outside his room and listened. Unless Stiles made some kind of alarming noise, his dad wouldn't wake up.

He returned to his room to find Allison tapping on the glass.

"Jesus, did you teleport over here or something? Weren't you waiting for your parents to go to bed?" He lifted the window as high as it would go and stood back while Allison climbed over the sill. "Are you sure you're not going to get into trouble for this?"

"My aunt's covering for me. I think she likes Scott, even though I stole condoms from her suitcase on his behalf." She helped him close the window, giving the room a once-over. Her eyes paused on the Vinyl Vanilla poster on the wall, then returned to him. "How was your afternoon?"

"Well, other than my dad choosing to confront me about my sexual orientation, it was uneventful."

Allison grabbed his arm, her eyes wide. "Stiles! What happened? Did he - was he upset?"

"Oh, no, no, he was perfectly supportive. He even asked me if I was being safe." He winced. "I wonder if he'd be completely ashamed to hear I haven't had any opportunities to be safe  _or_  unsafe with anybody, boy or girl."

"I bet he'd be relieved. I'd just as soon my parents never knew about my sexual history." She took a seat on his bed. "But that's a big deal. How did he find out about Derek?"

"Trust me, he's never going to hear about that. He just found out about me. He kind of guessed." Stiles shrugged, sitting beside her. "Which probably meant I was subconsciously wanting to tell him anyway? Whatever. There's nothing to tell."

"No, but someday, there might be, and it's good to know he'll back you up." She reached out and touched his knee, and he took her hand, trying to suppress the stupid grin that threatened to make an appearance. He went for the distraction.

"So how'd the studying go?"

He didn't even have to smirk or wiggle his eyebrows at her or anything for her to hear the air quotes around the word. She bit her lip and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Well, I didn't exactly manage to clarify much about geometry, but we did get through his problem set. He was a very good listener."

"I bet. Hot for teacher, huh?"

She cocked her head. "Do you really want details?"

Stiles had to think about that. It wasn't an easy question to answer. He'd always demanded details  _from_  Scott, but now that he had an opportunity to hear  _about_  Scott, the rules were different. But, fuck it, he'd never followed a rule in his life. "Be my guest. Go ahead, TMI me."

"Yeah, I don't know if I can do this while you're sitting there looking at me."

"What, do you want me to turn around or something?"

Allison scooted up so she was close to the top of Stiles' bed, then gestured him into the crook of her arm. "Here."

He wasn't going to say no to that. Hell, he was pretty sure  _no_  was not something he was capable of saying to Allison. If she'd been less awesome, that might have been a scary thought. He settled in against her, in what was starting to feel like a familiar position, and paused only a moment before draping an arm over her middle. "Now I'm not looking."

"Okay. You're sure you want me to tell you?"

"I have no idea," he admitted, "but it takes a lot for Scott to make me say  _ew._  You didn't break any laws or anything?" He had to content himself with laughing at the bestiality jokes in his own head.

"Nothing broken, I promise. We covered some new ground. Learned some new skills."

"We're not talking about geometry anymore, are we."

"I'm having a hard time deciding between being crude and squealing like I would with Lydia, so I'm hiding behind teaching metaphor." She brushed a hand over the hairs on his arm, which stood up at attention. "And now I'm trying not to laugh at myself."

"Come on, already. I'm going to fall asleep here." There was definitely no danger of that.

"Scott performed... admirably. On his, um. Oral exam."

"Oh, wow. Ten points to Gryffindor." He held up his hand, and she giggled as she high-fived it. "I take it you hadn't, you know, administered such an exam before?"

"Not with Scott. I haven't been super impressed with... previous pupils' attempts. But Scott was very attentive to detail."

Stiles guessed that might have something to do with being able to hear minute changes in her pulse. He thought it would be amazing to know exactly how much someone was getting off on what you were doing. For several moments, he was lost in imagining Allison's reaction, and Scott's response to it, and by the time he was done, he was half-hard.

"I'm glad he exceeded expectations." He shifted against her leg, wondering if she was going to say something, or if he should, but neither of them did. "And was there... I mean, did he... damn, I can't think of a reasonable teaching metaphor for  _did you blow him?"_

She laughed again, wrapping him up in a tight hug and holding on. "Don't even try to be subtle, Stiles. Yes. I did that."

"Double points. I'm a little jealous, but mostly proud of him, going where neither of us had gone before."

Her voice was soft, coming from somewhere above his head. "You feel like you're being left behind?"

"Well, we always did everything together." He paused, realizing how that might sound like a pretty unreasonable, if not offensive, suggestion. "Not that I would expect him to do that. Or you. I'm not saying - I mean, that's not -"

"Careful," she murmured.

He cleared his throat. "Can... you be more specific? What I should be careful about? Like, am I squashing you with my leg, or is it about what I'm telling you?"

Her fingers encircled his wrist and held on. "You said you wouldn't lie to me."

Allison's skin was smooth, and she smelled great, and her voice was gentle, but it took her hand around his wrist to bring him from half-hard to whimpering and bucking helplessly against her. "Oh my god."

She kept her voice even. "Don't worry, Stiles. I'm not upset. I just want you to tell me the truth."

"About... you? About Scott?"

"About  _everything."_

_Oh fuck._ He bit down on his lip hard enough to make it swell up. The pain kept him focused. "I can't. There are things I can't tell you. Things... I said I wouldn't tell. To people I - care about."

"That's okay," she said. She was still calm. "But no actual lies. I'd rather hear  _I can't tell you that_  than a lie. Okay?"

"Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry." He felt the sensation of  _sorry,_  so unfamiliar, and blinked back tears. "I'm really, really sorry." He winced as his voice cracked on the last  _really._

"Oh, honey." Allison moved down on the bed so she was lying on her side next to him, facing him, their knees touching. She didn't let go of his wrist, and when her eyes were level with his, she took his other one. "You didn't do anything to be sorry about."

"I've done  _so_  many things to be sorry about. I just never was before. And, fuck, there's a world of difference between fantasizing about Lydia or Derek or somebody holding me down and having you actually do it." He tugged at her hands, feeling them strong and secure on him, and whimpered a little.

"I know. I want to give you what you need, Stiles, but I don't want  _you_  to worry about doing the wrong thing. I just want to know what things you want."

"Somehow being in bed with a beautiful girl holding my wrists has gone to the top of the list."

"I'm serious," she insisted. "If I were Lydia, what would you want her to do?"

Stiles' head swam, thinking about the possibility of asking Lydia for anything at all. "Honestly? Whatever she wanted to do. Which would be nothing, judging by the last time that happened; she called me Jackson and passed out on my lap."

Allison sighed loudly and rolled Stiles over, kneeling over him. His wrists went over his head, and she leaned directly over him so that her hair fell against his face. He made some embarrassing noises, staring up at her.

"I might have to make you write down all your fantasies and put them in order by importance." She gave his wrists a little shake. "Or you could just  _tell me._  How's this? You want this?"

"God, yes," he gasped, "this is good, yes, thank you."

"Do you want to do it back to me?"

That made his brows draw down, like she was asking him what color curiosity was. "Why would I want to do that?"

"That's a good enough answer. To anybody else?"

"I -" He paused, remembering Scott on the practice field. "Maybe? A  _particular_  anybody."

"Another useful answer. Do I really need to ask you all three questions for every kink you might have? Can't you just tell me the ones at the top of your list?"

"I don't know!" Stiles squirmed a little, but she leaned on him harder and he stopped. "I don't know because there are things I don't even know about. I haven't  _done_  anything. And I didn't even know I liked -" He shut his mouth until she glared at him, and he gulped and went on. "- that I liked hitting... anybody. Until I was hitting somebody and... yeah. That was hot."

"All right, that makes sense." She pursed her lips. "I think I'm going to have to let you go for a minute. I'm just going to get my phone. Can you stay where you are?"

The question itself was so hot, he couldn't do much more than breathe hard while Allison climbed off him and dug in her backpack. It took him a moment to realize, when she returned and sat beside him, scrolling her phone's screen, that her own face was flushed and she looked a little glassy-eyed.

"Did you... I mean, was that..." He wondered how far he could push  _stay where you are_ , and brushed her knee with two fingertips. "You liked that too?"

She glanced at him briefly, then back at her phone. "You could say that. What I need to know is, what do you like, and how would Scott feel about me doing those things with you?"

"Oh." He watched her, feeling the anxiety beginning to build. "He's never going to be okay with you doing the things I want."

"I'm guessing you're right, at least about some of them. But we won't know until we ask him."

_Fuck_. "You're not going to call him right now!"

"No!" She placed a hand on his chest, which was starting to rise with his consternation, pushing him back down onto the bed. "No. Settle down. I'm not calling him. I'm finding a list of kinks, so I can ask you about them."

He stared up at her. "You're not."

"I am," she said. "And then I'm going to give the same list to Scott, and he's going to tell me what he thinks about me doing each of them with you."

Stiles could feel the inexplicable metallic taste of an impending panic attack. He clenched his teeth reflexively. "I - I don't know if I can deal with that."

Something in his voice made her drop her phone on the bed and climb back on top of him, this time folding his arms against his chest before wrapping him up. She hooked her legs around his so he couldn't struggle. He did anyway, but only for a few seconds before capitulating, trying to regulate his breathing. "You can. I know you can. I'm not going to tell you to do anything you don't want to do."

"But -"

"Which is why I need to  _know_  what you want to do. Even then, you can say no, but I want to hear it. I want to hear how you sound when you tell me yes, or no."

"But I can't -" Stiles squeezed his eyes shut. "I can't deal with knowing he doesn't want to."

"We'll find some things he can cope with." She stopped. "Wait, do you mean -"

"I can't," he said again, forcing out the words. "I already know the things I want aren't all that nice. But if I don't ask  _him_  if he wants them, at least I can pretend. At least I can pretend he might want those things too. Maybe. Someday."

"Stiles," she said, very gently. "I don't think Scott likes guys."

"I  _know,"_  he spat. "And neither does Derek. And Lydia doesn't want me, because even if I am a guy, she wouldn't want a guy like me. Even Danny thinks I'm a joke. I don't get  _anything."_

He was already crying by the time he reached the part about Danny. He didn't even  _care_  about Danny. He just was sick of not being anybody's choice.

"Stiles.  _Stiles._ " She said his name sharply, not angrily, but it was enough to jerk him partway out of his despair. "That's not true, okay? I know it feels like that sometimes, but you're going to find somebody, someday. I promise. Somebody who wants you just as much. And right now, there are things you  _can_  have, I swear."

He was about to ask her how she knew that, when suddenly she was kissing him, and that was so startling that he didn't even kiss back. After a moment, she paused, her hands on his cheeks, her breath warm on his wet lips.

"Stiles?" she said again. "You need to tell me to stop if you don't want it."

He laughed, sounding a little hysterical. "I am not insane. Of course I want it. Even if it's just out of pity. But I'm  _sure_  this counts as cheating."

"Weren't you sure about being in my bed with me also being cheating?" Allison leaned her head against his. "Do you trust me?"

"Yeah," he said. That was a no-brainer. Good thing, because at the moment, he had no brain.

"Do you think I would cheat on Scott? Ever, for any reason?"

"No." That was almost as impossible as him wanting to hold her down. "You wouldn't."

"So what does logic tell you?"

It took a few moments, but he managed logic. "That... he said it was fine? That you could kiss... other people?"

"You," she corrected. "He said it was okay for me to kiss  _you_. Because he -"

"Please don't," he begged. "Don't say what he feels. It's a lie."

"I'm not telling you a lie, Stiles. That one, I know." She kissed him again, and this time he opened his mouth and let her do it, hoping desperately he was doing the right thing with his tongue. The way she was holding him made him think at least she didn't find it totally gross. When she was done, she rested her cheek on his, feeling the stickiness of his tears, and sighed. "He loves you, and he wants you to have what you need. So are you going to help me figure out what that is?"

He sniffed. "Are you going to keep kissing me after I tell you? Or is that just a ploy?"

Her chuckle wasn't cruel, but he quivered anyway. "I promise, I won't do anything I don't want to do, no matter how much you want it." Another kiss, a quick one. "Now would you sit up so we can talk about this?"

Stiles uncoiled from her arms, sitting up and wiping his eyes. He still couldn't exactly believe what had just happened. "Do I get to see the list?"

"Not yet. I'm going to read it to you, so I can hear your reactions. Then I'll send you a copy, and you can fill it out yourself."

"What about you?"

"What about me?" she echoed. "I already did mine, months ago. Are you ready?"

" _Months_  ago?"

"I think you'll find that some of the things I want aren't very nice either. Can I begin?"

"One more question." He gave her a hopeful glance. "Does this mean I get to kiss you, too? Or do I have to wait for you to do it?"

"Mmmm." She appeared to consider it. Then she smiled. It was another one of those only-Scott-gets-this kind of smiles, and it took his fucking breath away. "I think we can negotiate that. Tonight, you can kiss me."

"Wow." He couldn't find any more words, at least not useful ones. Apparently knowing he  _could_  kiss her if he wanted to was enough, and he just sat quietly beside her, leaning against the wall while she paged through her phone.

"I'm going to go through them alphabetically. You're supposed to rate them on a scale of "no" to 5, meaning no means no, and any number, zero to five, means varying degrees of maybe, with zero being no thank you and five being the most enthusiastic yes possible. I'll take a verbal yes or no, and you can gauge the strength of your answer later. There's kind of a lot of them, so if you need a break, tell me. I'm going to assume you've never done any of these, but if you want to add any comments, go ahead. Okay?"

"You're really going to do this with Scott?" he ventured to ask. "About  _me?"_

Allison patted his knee. "Stiles, it's going to be very hard for me to simultaneously gag you and also to make you answer these questions."

"Oh, fuck," he said, twitching. She grinned, snuggling closer against his side.

"I'm going to take that to mean using gags is a yes. Now, I'll begin again with "abrasion."

She wasn't kidding when she said the list was long. Some of them were easy NOs, but many took a little thought. The first time he gave an ambiguous answer, she promptly asked, "Would you like Derek Hale to do that to you?" That clarified things a lot.

Somewhere around the L's, he paused and cleared his throat. "Um... apparently, 'being asked about my kinks' is a strong yes."

Allison nodded, looking a little strained. "I kind of knew 'asking about someone's kinks' was a yes for me, but... yeah. You want to stop?"

"Can I kiss you a little before we go on?" Just saying that aloud felt so improbable that he blushed. "If you don't mind. I mean, if it's not -"

"Stiles." She set the phone down and turned her head far enough to reach his mouth with hers. Every time he made a noise, she made one too, an encouraging one, and smiled.

"He  _really_  said it was okay for you to kiss me?" he asked.

"He really did. And other things. But -"

"What other things?"

" _Stiles._ " She shook her head. "This isn't about Scott giving me permission. I can give myself that. This is about me figuring out what he needs, too. He already knows I love him, and I want to take care of him. I want to know what's going to be too scary for him to tolerate. If I didn't think he could tolerate this, I wouldn't be here at all. But this isn't a contest. There's no winner or loser. You get kissed because  _I_  want to kiss you."

That inspired another one of those goofy smiles. He could feel it tugging at his cheeks. "Yeah?"

Her answer was to kiss him again, harder this time, hard enough to bruise his lips against her teeth, and that was unexpectedly, ridiculously hot. When he reached up to pull her closer, she captured his hand and held it between hers. He groaned.

"Let's finish this list, okay?" she suggested, controlling her breathing. "And then I'll go home."

They made it all the way through to the last thing on the list (wrestling, which was a yes). Allison emailed him a link to the list, then stood and stretched provocatively. "Your homework, Mr. Stilinski, is to complete that list by the next time we meet to talk, rating each one No-to-5. All right?"

"You got it." He dared to reach out and take her hand. "You... don't have to go, if you don't want to."

Allison looked at him. "I think I would be calling my own judgment into question if I got into that bed with you. But..." She leaned in close enough to speak into his ear, dropping her voice to a low murmur. "You were there when Scott informed you that he wouldn't mind you jerking off, thinking about me."

"Uh..." That was the only response he had.

"Well, how about you do that tonight, imagining me with you in your bed while you do it?" She backed away, smiling with satisfaction at his expression. "You can decide exactly what I'm doing in that bed. And tell me about it tomorrow. Got it?"

"Is this another homework assignment?" he managed, watching her walk to the window and raise it high enough to climb out over the sill.

Her answering smile was innocent, which made it all the more suspicious. "Let's say if you don't complete it to my satisfaction, I'll have to spank you." With a little wave, she disappeared into the night.

Stiles tripped over his feet on the way into the hallway. He managed to get his erection to go down enough to let him take a piss, then did a quick sweep of the house, locking doors and turning off lights. Then he returned to his room, closed the window, stripped, and climbed into bed. In his imagination, Allison was there, just as naked as he was, and kissed him the whole time he was stroking himself. It took about a minute and a half, after which he slid gracelessly into sleep.

His dreams were colored by the more appealing items on the list, but it wasn't Allison who was doing things to him, or Scott, or Lydia. It was Derek who was kissing him, Derek who murmured words of seduction, Derek who captured his hands and tied them behind his back. He was gentle and thoughtful, and forceful without being cruel, and smiled at Stiles' cries and moans. In other words, he was completely unlike Derek Hale in real life, and when Stiles woke up in the morning to memories of the dreams, he was crying again.

* * *

<http://youtu.be/gaznmd_FU98>

_Let other words fail_  
 _I don't find it fair  
_ _But anyway_

_This little string keeps on pulling_  
 _So I gotta pull myself down some different path_  
 _Inside my mind_  
 _Needs out_  
 _I wanna trip myself away  
_ _But I better wait I better wait I better wait_

_I get the sense of a spark so I follow_  
 _I don't believe that she knows something I know_  
 _I tell myself as I stay in the shadow  
_ _I tell myself not to go, but I go_

_Needing to see_  
 _Whichever way she's going_  
 _If there's any way_  
 _So far from here_  
 _There's little fear_  
 _Her words could ever hurt me_  
 _I don't want to wait_  
 _Don't want to wait  
_ _Don't want to wait I..._

_Don't look don't talk don't yell_  
 _Just close your eyes_  
 _This may or may not come_  
 _As some surprise_  
 _I've found obsessions_  
 _Which to live and die by_  
 _Don't look don't talk don't yell  
_ _Just close your eyes_

_\- Finger Eleven, "Sense of a Spark"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The checklist mentioned above can be found at <http://latches.webslaves.com/checklist.htm>


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another canon-free chapter! Glimpses of Sterek at last, but they still have a couple hurdles to get over. Meanwhile, warnings for Dom/sub, discussion of kinks, conversation about the calorie content of junk food, frottage and dirty talk between Allison and Stiles, and schmoopy friendshippy conversations between Stiles and Scott. 
> 
> -amy and gala

 

Waking up the next morning was like being five again and Stiles was tiptoeing downstairs at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons. He couldn't wait to jump out of bed and play with his new toy. Or, more accurately, let his new toy play with him. Or maybe  _he_  was the toy? Whatever. He didn't need any more sleep.

But his phone was quiet, and there were no messages or texts from either Allison or Scott. He shook it, hoping that, like a reverse Etch-A-Sketch, he could get the information to filter out, but nothing materialized.

Even his dad noticed he was antsier than usual. "Why don't you go to the store and get some more milk?" he suggested after Stiles went to the fridge and opened it for the eighth time. "We're almost out. There's a twenty in my jacket pocket."

It was a valid request, and Stiles would have been grateful even if they hadn't been low on anything. No information was so much worse than bad news. So the first place he went wasn't the store; it was Scott's house.

Stiles knew it didn't matter that it was only 9:17am. Mrs. McCall would welcome him, day or night, as long as he was sober and let Scott do his homework. He let himself in, ditched his shoes by the front door, and went looking for whomever was awake.

Mrs. McCall was currently leaning over the kitchen table, upon which lay the dismembered entrails of a vacuum cleaner, and was fitting the pieces back together inside the case with a focused frown.

"I don't suppose you know where this goes," she said, holding up a screw with a flange at the base.

"I remember nothing," he lied, "but I'm pretty good at Googling. What's the model number?"

"You don't have to fix my vacuum cleaner for me, Stiles."

"Well, in that case, I'll just head upstairs and -"

"Hold up," she said, raising a hand.

Stiles skidded to a halt, socks barely gripping the hardwood floor. He quickly went over a list of house rules, always followed when Scott's mom was home, and usually deployed regardless. Stiles wasn't the type to automatically view adults as authorities, but Mrs McCall was different. She was practically his step-mom. She deserved it, more than most. Either he'd already followed them - shoes off - or they weren't currently applicable - drinks in the bedroom only in a container with a lid - so unless he was forgetting one, he should have been in the clear.

"Yeah?"

"I have to ask you a few things." She pulled a chair out from where it was neatly tucked into the table. "Make yourself comfortable."

Stiles wasn't sure what this was about, but he was nearly positive it wasn't good. Maybe she had spotted some werewolf signs. Or maybe Scott had even gone ahead and told her, and thrown him under the bus as lore-master so he wouldn't have to answer questions. Or maybe it was mundane. What if she'd put Scott's coming home from 'studying' with hickeys and the parent-teacher conference together and realised her son was probably not going to earn all this semester's credits? If Mrs. McCall asked him seriously, Stiles would be forced to tell her he recommended summer school so Scott wouldn't graduate off-schedule, even though Scott would probably want to murder him for ruining his July.

Stiles settled on the ancient cushion with a dazzling  _you-must-be-crazy, I'm-not-hiding-shit_ smile. As she mirrored it with her own and temporarily took her attention off him, Stiles raised an arm to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He whispered, "Aaany time you wanna come down..." hoping desperately that Scott's werewolf senses were active. If Scott could feel Allison across school grounds after knowing her a month, surely he could hear the guy he'd known for twelve years from a floor away.

Unless he was asleep. The fucker was probably asleep, and therefore completely useless to Stiles. He was going to have to get himself out of the danger zone with sheer boldfaced nattering.

"What's up? Are you looking for a venture capitalist to help you develop a new, better vacuum? Because I'd love to get in on the ground floor of that, but I've got like fifty bucks to my name, so."

Ms McCall cut right through his bullshit without a pause. She was exceptionally good at that, even better than his father, which was probably why he gave her so many of his limited respect-authority points. "Scott has a girlfriend," she said.

"He does? I mean, he does. Yes."

"I don't expect Scott to tell me every facet of his life. We might be close, but he's still a teenage boy. I've seen her for all of five minutes, and not under the best of conditions. Her father yelling for her to get into the car is the only reason I know her name is Allison. No, I don't expect him to tell me everything." She leaned in conspiratorially. Stiles couldn't help but feel like the dying rabbit spotted by the vulture. "That's what I have  _you_  for."

"Well, her name is Allison, you were right about that!" he joked weakly.

"I know my son, and I know that if he hasn't forced you two to be friends, he's at least inundated you with information on her pretty eyes. I suspect she has thirty-two teeth and she likes ponies."

"I don't know how she feels about horses, actually. She probably doesn't boil them for glue though."

She gave him an encouraging gesture. "Come on. Tell me her three best qualities, so I can maintain the illusion that she's perfect for him and I don't have to worry."

Ms McCall would probably not consider 'she's into open relationships' a top three quality, as much as Stiles might. But no worries. It wasn't like she was lacking for good characteristics. "She's brilliant at school. She can calm Scott down by holding his hand. And - um. Oh, she can shoot a mean crossbow!"

"Very funny, Stiles." She made a face. "I notice you didn't say anything about her cute body or her gorgeous smile."

"Isn't it kind of bad form for the best friend to notice those things?" Another lie. So far she'd spotted all of them, but she'd assumed the truth was a lie. Maybe he should keep telling the truth? "We had kind of a fight the other morning before school."

Mrs. McCall had turned back to her vacuum. "You and Allison?"

"Me and Scott. It was kind of... I told him..." Stiles felt his mouth run out of truth, spluttering like an old-fashioned engine. "He needs to study more if he's going to keep his grades up."

"Yeah, I bet he didn't like that at all." The look she gave him indicated she knew he wasn't giving her an honest answer, but she wasn't going to push him either. "All right. Go on up. If he doesn't throw you out of his room, would you remind him he said he would clean the upstairs bathroom today, too?"

"What, are you  _trying_ to sabotage our friendship?" he complained, scooting out of the room as fast as his socks would take him.

When he reached the door to Scott's room, however, he stopped. It wasn't like there was a sign reading  _Under pain of death, do not pass this threshold if you've kissed my girlfriend_  on the doorknob, but Stiles had no idea what he was going to discover in that room. It might very well be one pissed-off werewolf. He took a deep breath, then knocked softly. "Scott? It's me."

After a long pause, Stiles heard Scott's sleepy voice call, "C'm'in."

Scott was on his stomach, one bare arm thrust out from under the sheet to dangle over the edge of the bed. On the floor was a printout bearing a familiar title, one Stiles was pretty sure Scott would  _not_  want his mother finding by accident. He gathered up the pages and hurriedly collated them, being careful not to look at Scott's responses, and stacked them on the dresser, face-down. He took a seat on the edge of Scott's bed.

Scott was sitting now, squinching up his face. "What time is it?"

"About nine-thirty." Stiles' usual move would have been to tease Scott about staying up late, but suddenly that possibility had an entirely new set of meanings, some of which involved Allison and some of which didn't, and god, should he even be  _sitting_  on Scott's bed anymore? He stood up in a hurry and paced to the window, waiting and trying not to watch Scott being disheveled and half-naked.

Eventually Scott seemed to become aware of the same thing, and he reached off the bed onto the floor for a t-shirt. "So... last night."

"Your mom told me to remind you to clean the bathroom today," Stiles said quickly. Scott stared at him.

"That's really what you came over to talk about?"

Stiles rubbed his arms, which were suddenly covered with goosebumps. "I'm just kind of biding my time until you throw me out. You think you might be planning to do that?"

"No! Stiles..." Scott sighed. "No. I'm not going to be weird about this. This is not going to make things weird for us. Just... would you sit down?"

Stiles managed to return to the bed before sitting, but Scott's exasperation was more of a motivation than he'd expected. In the meantime, Scott was feeling around on the floor again, and Stiles sat there with his hands in his lap for way too long before realizing what he was probably looking for. "Uh, the, uh. The checklist. It's on your dresser."

"Oh, thanks." Scott gave him a curious look as he flipped through the pages. "Did you -?"

"Allison made me do it too. I didn't read yours."

Scott nodded. His face was growing more perplexed as he read it over. "And this stuff... this is really what turns you on? I mean, most of it's, like, so weird."

"Not most of it. I don't really want to be judged by you, but I'd understand if it made you laugh or freak out a little. Hell, it makes  _me_  laugh and freak out a little."

He couldn't help see what was written on the papers now. It mostly looked like the letters "KO" written over and over again. He didn't see any 0-5 scale like Allison had told him to use. He got stuck in wondering what "KO" might stand for. Was Scott going to knock him out? He couldn't imagine Scott cared about shares in the Coca-Cola company. Maybe he wanted to stab him with a dagger-axe?

"Yeah, I don't want to judge you. I'm sorry. I'll try to be as cool as I can, but Allison said..." Scott held up the paper. "She said I could say no to any of it. That I should tell her what stuff freaked me out, and that would be, you know. Off limits. For now, anyway."

The waiting and sitting still thing was way worse than anything Scott was going to tell him. "Of course. I can't believe you've been okay with - everything so far." He just couldn't bring himself to say  _kissing her._ It wasn't just the kissing, but  _being turned on, in your girlfriend's bed, while kissing her_  was absolutely not coming out of his mouth.

Scott's smile was mild. "I'm not saying I won't freak out tomorrow. It just seems like, if there's anybody you should be able to tell everything, it should be me. And if I can't deal with it, maybe Allison's the next best person. I don't want you to be, you know, stuck, just because I'm not cool enough to handle something."

"Dude." Stiles had to smile. "You don't  _have_  to handle all the weird stuff I like. I'm not judging  _you,_  either. I don't think there's anything in the bro-code that says you have to solve my loneliness or anxiety problems."

Scott shrugged. "I actually think that's kind of exactly what a best friend is supposed to do. And in this case, it looks like Allison can do it better than I can. Do you blame me if I'm a little relieved?"

"Relieved is not the word I was expecting." Stiles dropped his voice. As if someone might be listening in who would care. "I'm pretty sure most people would say I'm taking advantage of you. Or her. Or something."

"Yeah, well, they obviously don't know what they're talking about," Scott said stoutly. "It's none of their goddamn business. So how are we supposed to to do this? I could just give this to you."

Stiles was startled to suddenly have all seven pages of Scott's BDSM checklist in his hands. "You, uh, could. You could do that." He averted his eyes from the column of KO's, which - his eyes snapped back to the text - had suddenly resolved into right-side-up "OK"s. He focused more closely on the paper. "Scott. Wait a second."

Scott was already out of bed, had stripped off his last-night's pajama shirt, and was digging through his drawer for a clean t-shirt. "What?"

"I don't think you got what you were supposed to do. Allison made me use this no-to-five scale..."

"Yeah, she explained that, but since this was about you and her, not about me, she just said I should mark the ones that wigged me out." Scott came over and turned to page three. "Yeah, see, like this one... I wasn't even sure if  _gunplay_ meant a loaded gun or not, but it doesn't matter; I just don't think that's a good idea."

"No, yeah, that's fine. But -" He flipped back to the first page and stared at the column of OK's. "You can't tell me you're really okay with all of this."

"I can't?"

Scott's voice had suddenly dropped in volume. He turned to Stiles with a curious smile, and as he leaned in closer to whisper into Stiles' ear, Stiles felt all the muscles in his stomach tense up at once, like Scott had hit him with a lacrosse ball.

"I think it's on page five, but you might notice that there's an OK next to 'Restrictive rules on behavior.' I'm pretty sure that's not about you restricting mine. So don't tell me what I can't do."

Stiles was not going to flinch or moan or otherwise do something completely inappropriate. He did manage to hold himself very still while Scott spoke, and waited until Scott went back to looking for a clean shirt to exhale. It wasn't the first time Stiles had been turned on in Scott's bedroom, but it was definitely the first time Stiles could blame it on something Scott had  _done._

Reading the sheaf of OK's wasn't much of a help. The handful of "not right now"s and "sorry, no"s didn't diminish the impact that, suddenly, Scott had stepped right out of the way of Stiles being tied up. Or collared. Or (Stiles swallowed) penetrated. Or anything else Allison might want to do to him. He wasn't sure penetration was really a justifiable method of dealing with either loneliness or anxiety, but thinking about it was definitely a turn-on. He sank to the edge of the bed again.

Scott came over and sat down next to him, now fully clothed. "I don't really want to know details. Like, you don't have to tell me your ratings for any of these. But, um, I feel like I should ask: can you tell me, honestly, if there's anything on there I said no to that you're likely to do anyway?"

It was a completely valid question. It even made Stiles feel a little sentimental, that Scott knew him well enough to know he should ask it. Stiles started again at the beginning of the list and read carefully through Scott's notes, one 'no' item at a time. When he reached the end, he shook his head. "I really don't think so."

Scott sighed in relief. "Okay. That's... thank you. Because Allison explained the difference between hard limits and soft limits, and I really tried to stick to saying no to the ones that felt like the first kind."

Suddenly Stiles felt like the biggest asshole in the world. He grabbed Scott's arm, startling him. "Look, you don't have to be okay with  _any_  of this stuff. You are totally within your rights to say no, fuck, absolutely not, get away from my girlfriend."

"I know." Scott put his hand over Stiles', removing his fingers, and gently but firmly set Stiles' hand back into his own lap. "I know I could say that. And I'm not. Okay?"

The hand on Stiles' turned suddenly into a hug, and Stiles didn't even know who'd initiated it. It was brief and fierce and left him a little breathless, but at least they were both smiling. Stiles wasn't exactly sure what Scott's smile said, but his own meant  _you're my fucking best friend in the world, and I am so damn lucky._

"I'd better call Allison and let her know we already talked," said Scott. "I'm guessing she'll catch up with you later."

Stiles moved toward the door. "Yeah, I had an errand thing to do for my dad."

While getting milk had been a piece of busywork laid down by his observant and kindly father, they actually did need some. Probably a few other things too. Not to mention, if he returned to the house with nothing, he'd have to spend time explaining where he'd been. Things with Scott, at least, were as settled as they were going to be. Stiles called a quick goodbye to Mrs. McCall as he stuffed his feet back into his shoes and headed off to WinCo.

Ignoring the layout of the store and common sense weaving through aisles, Stiles headed first to the back of the store. There was a shelf there with clearance treats, the sort of thing Stiles bought for himself with his own money, so Dad couldn't complain he wasn't sharing. It wasn't rational, but every time he went shopping Stiles had to go there first as soon as he got inside, otherwise it felt like people were taking the deals under his nose.

Cheese and bacon crackers secured in his basket, he moved to the dairy aisle. Skim milk was the obvious choice. It had been the very first thing Stiles had switched in the family diet, and maybe years ago he'd found it thin, or hard to swallow. Nowadays it was the two percent milk that seemed to be thick with fat. He couldn't help but imagine bits of fat floating in it like pulp in orange juice.

A gallon of milk led him to the display of breakfast products. Like Thor, there was a place in Stiles' heart that only Pop Tarts could occupy. He couldn't buy any now, though. If they came home in the same plastic bag as everything else, Dad would inevitably find them, and toast himself up a sugar and carb death packet. No, Pop Tarts were to be smuggled directly to his locker, where Stiles would eventually lightly barter with Mr Creswell, who loved him, for rights to use the microwave in the teacher's lounge. Or consumed at Scott's house the morning after a sleepover, if Mrs. McCall wasn't around to make them breakfast.

What he really needed to get was cereal. Cereal was a tricky proposition. His dad would not be moved on his opinion of shredded wheat, whether they be Weetabix, Shreddies, Mini-Wheats, or even Frosted Mini-Wheats. On the other side of the equation, Stiles wasn't about to feed his dad death in a bowl like Cap'n Crunch or Froot Loops.

With a box of Crispix in his basket - the second place choice of cornflakes ultimately rejected because Dad would make jokes about how Frosted Flakes tasted better, and Stiles' heart couldn't handle that - he moved to the produce. Frozen blueberries were a snack they both enjoyed.

He was halfway through the mountain of pound boxes of strawberries in an attempt to find some of the less ripe ones when his hackles rose. He might not have wolf senses, but humans weren't that useless at noticing situations in progress. Their species had survived through the mammoth hunts, after all.

Stiles dropped his box and scanned from right to left. On the very edge of the produce section, just close enough to ping his peripheral vision, was Derek. Derek Hale was in the produce section, looking at something red. Apples? Potatoes?

At that point Stiles didn't have a choice. His limbs carried him directly to the menacing hulk of his dreams. Who was lightly squeezing tomatoes to check for consistency. What the fuck?

"Um, hi?"

Derek looked at him for a second, then turned back to the slanted table in front of him. Rude welcome, until he considered that Derek didn't need to look at him to know he was there. Derek had probably smelled him from the other side of the section. He'd probably heard Stiles humming along to the music on the other side of the fucking store. Looking at him was acknowledging him, which  _was_  like a hello. Or at least that was the way Stiles was choosing to interpret it.

"Tomatoes, huh." Stiles stopped there, appalled at what had just dropped out of his mouth. Could he have said anything more obvious and stupid? Derek would probably snap back  _yes, Stiles, these big red things are tomatoes; we're also in a store and breathing air_  and  _if it wasn't for No Child Left Behind, what grade would you be stuck in, kindergarten?_

"I like BLTs," Derek answered.

It was terse, but also nowhere near as caustic as the Derek in Stiles' imagination.

"Toasted bread?" If Derek was giving him the opportunity to have a interaction without rage and threats, via a conversation about sandwiches, Stiles damn well would. He was pretty sure it would end in threats anyway, but he could give it a try. Derek wouldn't rip his throat out with his werewolf fangs in a public place. The worst case scenario was him saying something that Stiles would shame-masturbate to later. Or maybe that was the best case scenario?

Derek tossed his head. "Of course."

"It's not that dumb a question. I've seen BLTs on bagels before."

"No."

Stiles paused. "That's a  _no, I don't like it that way,_  right? Because it's not like you can say  _no_  and make bagel BLTs not exist. You don't have that power."

Derek considered him. "Thick, inch high slices of bakery bread. But no mayonnaise. I hate when it gets soggy."

He nodded. "Mayo's bad for you anyway. One tablespoon is fifteen percent of your daily fats."

Now Derek scrunched his face, and - okay, maybe Stiles had been wrong about the not-wolfing-out-in-public thing, maybe Derek was going to murder him for dissing a condiment that he normally loved, just not on a BLT, maybe -

"You're worried about your calorie intake? Why."

It didn't come out like a question. It was very much an interrogation, from the guy Stiles' brain hysterically classified as Very Bad Cop, considering the menacing and the dead-eyed stare. And was his brain playing tricks, or had Derek gotten closer?

"Um, I'm not? I just know this stuff because of my dad." Stiles didn't like the idea of telling someone who was only nominally an ally about a weakness of his family, but half of Beacon Hills probably already knew that the Stilinski kid nagged his dad about healthy eating at every turn. If Derek didn't know his dad's side of the family had a history of heart conditions, it probably wouldn't be difficult to find out.

"Good. Counting calories is stupid. Dangerous."

"Noted," Stiles said firmly, and was surprised by the glint of relief in Derek's eyes before he schooled his expression. Stiles knew Derek had had a handful of female cousins, before everything had gone to hell. Maybe one of them had been diet-obsessed and Derek was sensitive. It was actually sort of mind-blowing to imagine Derek being sensitive about  _any_  topic, but Stiles wasn't making up Derek's glance into Stiles' basket to check the food inside.

"So, uh, I guess I'll let you get back to it?"  _End on a positive note,_ Stiles, he told himself.  _Use it later._ "Picking up your fresh bread and all? Wait - how do you fry bacon at your house, anyway? There's no way you have electricity, never mind a connected stovetop. Do you fry it outside, on a skillet? Hey, do you make your own bacon? Does your furry side catch a pig and then you carve it into -"

"Go away, Stiles."

That had definitely been a growl. Stiles could point out that growling didn't exactly sell him less on the wild-animal-catches-his-own-meat theory, but mentioning that would probably annoy Derek further. He found himself both backing away and getting hard. By the time he stumbled into the display of ripe plums, he was choking back a whimper.

Derek reached out and caught the display before it could topple over, shoving Stiles away in the process. He glared at Stiles, looking him up and down, his nostrils flaring.

"This isn't the appropriate place for this."

Stiles had to wonder  _for what?_  Not for talking about BLTs. Maybe for getting too personal with the questions. Or - god, maybe Derek could  _smell_  the way he was getting turned on? Of course he could. That was exactly what was happening.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't - I mean, I don't really - it's not your problem. I'll just go."

Stiles managed to scoot away out from under Derek's nose -  _especially_  his nose - before his traitorous body could do any more damage. He almost ran right out of the store without paying for his groceries, but he remembered in time to redirect himself into the self-checkout lane. Being caught shoplifting in front of Derek Hale would have been almost more embarrassing than Derek discovering - than Derek finding out what he had -

Stiles clamped down on his panic response as he watched Derek file into a checkout lane four aisles down, glance over, then determinedly ignore Stiles. As quickly as he could, Stiles stuffed everything into two bags, paid for it with his dad's twenty, grabbed the receipt and headed for his Jeep. Then he got out his phone and clutched it in both hands.

**Any chance,**  he typed with trembling fingers,  **you might have a little time for me later?**

He sent that and waited, not wanting to guilt Allison into doing anything she might not be able to deal with. It wasn't like he was her responsibility.

**I think that can be arranged,**  she replied, and he let out the breath he'd been holding.

**I know you and Scott are talking today.**

**That doesn't mean you can't get what you need. Anyway, leave that to me. Are you home?**

**WinCo parking lot. Just heading home.** He swallowed, trying to focus on the road outside his car.  **As soon as I can, anyway.**

Eventually he did manage to turn the key in the ignition and put the car into gear. Her next response didn't come until he was halfway back to his house, already feeling more calm.  **Will you be alone in the house today?**

He idled at the next intersection while he replied.  **My dad's got an overnight shift, but he won't be leaving until after dinner.**

Another long pause, during which Stiles attempted to keep his mind on the familiar route home and not on the disdainful expression on Derek's face in his memory.  **How about I come over tonight after your dad leaves for work?**

**Perfect,** he replied. He wasn't going to tell her how guilty he already felt about taking her away from Scott. She'd said he needed to let her handle it, and he would.

Without Allison or Scott to keep him occupied, Saturday was a pretty fucking empty prospect. He decided he wasn't going to let it get to him. Even Xbox Live couldn't distract him for ten hours, but he was able to split things up with a jog around the block after dinner before returning to Costel39's friendly interrogation about Allison.

He wasn't even sure how to answer questions about her. At least when it came to Derek, he could say  _he's hot, but he's a jerk, and I would never._  But the expected answer in the case of Allison was actually different from the honest answer. If he were honorable, he'd say  _she's my best friend's girlfriend, and I would never._ If he were himself in an ordinary universe, he would say  _she's my best friend's girlfriend, and yeah, I'd totally tap that, isn't that a fucking shame._ And today, he typed the words  _ **she's coming over tonight, and her boyfriend says she has free reign to do a whole list of things with me, and I already gave her permission to do most of them.**_

**Shit, man,**  Costel39 said.  **That's got to be freaking you out.**

And he could only rest his head on his arms and think he must be going insane, because the answer was no. No, that wasn't what was freaking him out. Scott was the most generous best friend in the world, and Allison made him feel safe and turned on at the same time, and he couldn't begin to express how lucky he was, and -

And he was still obsessing about an asshole werewolf who growled at him and thought he was  _inappropriate._  Just thinking about that made his dick jump, and he'd already jerked off twice today.

**I need to figure out a way to forget about him,** he told Franco.

**Maybe your girl can make you,**  Franco suggested.

Which actually wasn't a half-bad idea. Maybe Allison actually could. If anybody could, he guessed it would be her.

At dinner, his dad watched with a bemused expression while Stiles dropped the serving spoon into the broccoli three times and knocked over an entire glass of iced tea. He leaned his chin on his hand.

"Stiles, are you  _sure_  there isn't something going on you want to tell me about?"

"I told you," he said for the third time, "I'm staying home. Allison might come over for a little while. We have a project due next week." All of which was true. All of which did not begin to cover what he was obsessing about. But his dad just nodded and took another bite of chicken and didn't ask a fourth time.

"You won't mind if I call to check on you later, then?"

He shrugged. "Whenever you want. If it's super late, I might be asleep, but I doubt before midnight."

Stiles did his best to stay out of his dad's way until he left for work. The garage door hadn't even finished closing when he had his phone out and was texting Allison.  **He's gone. He said he might call later, though.**

**That is totally okay. I'll be on my way in a few minutes.**

He paused, chewing on his lip.  **Do you want me to do anything before you get here?**

**Do anything?**  she asked. He could almost hear her tone.

**Never mind.**

**You mean like a shower? An enema? Write a sonnet?**

**OH GOD NEVER MIND.**  Now he was sure she was laughing. Somehow, though, he didn't feel hurt by her teasing. It felt sweet.

In the shower, he considered her second suggestion. He was ninety-nine percent sure there would be no need for anything like... that, even if he'd had the equipment for it. But he did wash himself very thoroughly, as far as he could reach without straining.

For the third one, he loaded Shakespeare's Sonnet 57 on his phone, and when he met her at the door, instead of commenting on how hot she looked in her jeans (which she most certainly did), he began to read:

"Being your slave, what should I do but tend  
Upon the hours and times of your desire?  
I have no precious time at all to spend,  
Nor services to do, till you require."

"Stiles," she said, her smile widening, but he held out a hand while he continued.

"Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour  
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,  
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour  
When you have bid your servant once adieu;  
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought  
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,  
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought  
Save, where you are how happy you make those."

As she listened, Allison closed the door behind her and untied her sneakers slowly, tucking them under the bench. Stiles felt a lot less stupid than he'd expected he would, reciting the poem for Allison. It seemed like a fitting tribute for someone who'd agreed to handle him in the way she had.

"So true a fool is love that in your will," he said softly, "though you do any thing, he thinks no ill."

Her cheeks were pink when he concluded the final couplet. "You did not actually just write that."

Stiles gave her a little half-bow. "I did not actually. It's Shakespeare. But maybe a little appropriate. And full disclosure, I did take a shower, but I didn't do the other thing you told me to do."

"I don't even know how to do one of those," she admitted. "I didn't expect... I mean, you really don't have to do everything I tell you." She reached out with both hands and held his forearms in a tight grip before sliding them around his back and pulling him close. "I want to apologize for not being here sooner. You sounded like you needed a hug this morning. I've got one for you now, anyway. Was it something Scott said?"

"No! No, not at all. Scott was amazing." He accepted her hug, kissing her cheek without thinking about whether or not it might be okay. "Seriously, when he showed me his checklist, I tried to tell him he'd done it wrong, because he'd said okay to so many things."

She didn't appear upset by the cheek kiss. "So what set you off?"

"Derek." She didn't look surprised by that, either, and nodded. "But I'm guessing specifics are the thing you want?"

"In a minute. Let's go to your room." Allison ushered him forward briskly, almost stepping on his heels with her socks. She ignored the mess of his room and turned off the television before facing him. Then she stepped in close, untucking his t-shirt and lifting it up over his head. Stiles was so surprised, he didn't even make a comment. He just stood there and let her do it.

"I have some ideas about how things are going to go tonight," she said conversationally, "but I want you to tell me about what upset you first. My theory is, whatever got to you is probably what you need."

Stiles managed to get enough saliva in his mouth to keep talking while she unzipped his jeans, though his voice came out a little hoarse. "So I saw him at the grocery store, and I said something dumb and he like, snarled, and I backed away but he shoved me and got close trying to save a display and even though I had room to move it felt like I was pinned. And uh." He shivered at the brush of her hand against the hem of his boxers. "Yeah."

Allison considered this. "So what I'm hearing is... predator-prey play, and bondage."

Stiles eyelashes fluttered of their own accord, hands spasming into clenched fists. Leave it to Allison to sum up his and Derek's entire situation in four words. "Yeah, pretty much."

"All right." She turned him around with both hands and gave him a gentle push. "Go stand over there, along the wall, facing out. Close your eyes."

Stiles did as requested. A few noises later - each one of which he wanted to look for, but followed orders instead - something was pressing against him, first against his stomach, then compressing the whole front of him. It took Stiles a good thirty seconds to realise it was the door. An additional thud, and the door wasn't moving slightly with his breaths, it was staying still as his chest compressed against it on the inhale.

"There. That'll hold you until I'm ready. Keep your eyes closed, Stiles."

Logically he knew he was pinned between the wall and the door. Nothing was really keeping him there. A few sidesteps to the right and he'd be back in his room. Or he could shove forward and his momentum would overcome the weight holding the door in place. But he didn't want to be logical. He didn't want to think. He was pinned in place, and he wasn't moving because she wanted it that way.

_Derek wanted it that way, too,_  his brain whispered insidiously, and he squirmed a little.

It was not clear from the noises she was making what exactly was going on, but they involved moving furniture and some effort, interspersed with several minutes of silence.

"You doing okay back there?" she asked at one point, and he stammered an affirmative. "I'm almost done... all right." The sudden change in light made him squint, and he stumbled forward as the door moved away. She was standing right in front of him, and reached up to pat his cheek sharply. "Look at me. Come on, right here." The moment he focused on her face, her eyes narrowed into slits and her teeth bared in a warning snarl. "You've got five seconds to be on that bed."

Stiles felt the same immediate panic-arousal reaction he had in the grocery store. Which was maybe kind of ridiculous, considering Allison was at least two inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter than he was - and yet, he didn't even have to ask the question  _or else what._  She was making it damn clear, without saying one word, that if he didn't follow her directions, she would rip his throat out with her teeth. In that moment, Stiles believed it even more than he had when Derek had said it.

He moved as quickly as he could. When she reached out to push him faster, urging him on with a slap to his hip and a shove to his shoulder, he whimpered one apology before she snapped, "Shut up,"and he did.

Once she had him on his back, she captured first one wrist and then the other, looping what felt like ropes around them and resting the cable across the center of each palm. He gripped them, but not too tightly, because the sensation of the rope digging into his wrist felt necessary if he wasn't going to completely lose himself in the experience. Because, yeah, his head was swimming and his vision was a little grey and he was hard enough to cut diamonds, but he still needed to remember that his dad was going to call at some point, and he would need to be aware enough to talk to him.

Stiles opened his mouth to say something to this effect, and then Allison rested the flat of her hand over his mouth. It wasn't preventing him from making noise; it was a warning.

"Prey doesn't talk," she whispered. "It's very... very... quiet."

_You're hunting wabbits,_  Stiles thought, and swallowed the hysterical giggle that threatened to emerge from his throat. Something in her eyes told him that would have been a very bad idea. Instead, he nodded, once, and she nodded back. The look of satisfaction on her face felt like a benediction. He'd never wanted to be a good boy, not once, but for Allison he thought he might make an exception.

She traced her finger down the center of his throat, over his Adam's apple, to his solar plexus. Now her expression was playful, but still very intense. It wasn't unlike a cat curiously watching a bug just before dismembering it.

"I like you this way." The path of her finger on his bare skin tickled a little, but there was no way he was going to try to get away. He kept his breath shallow, so as not to interrupt her passage. "I can see everything... exactly where everything is, inside you. Your heart, your lungs. Your liver." She scooted down to straddle his hips and cupped the right side of his body, just under his nipple, then leaned in close. "I really like liver."

Stiles could barely hear his own heart beating, he was so attuned to the sound of Allison's voice. It didn't even matter that she was kneeling over his dick, that maybe he'd fantasized about being under somebody in that position six or a hundred times, and if there had been a couple fewer layers of clothing between them, he could have slid inside her. It only mattered that she still looked like she was two heartbeats away from killing him - like,  _actually_  killing him.

"I could do anything," she went on, her voice as smooth as glass, "anything at all, and you wouldn't stop me. You'd let me take exactly what I wanted, wouldn't you?"

He almost responded with words, but at the last minute nodded his head instead.

"Yeah. And I think you'd like it. I think you want me to have... everything I want." Her finger's second passage across his rib cage pressed more firmly. "No matter how much it hurts."

That almost made him cry, not because of the pain, which was inconsequential, but because it was  _true._  He nodded again, gulping, relying on his eyes to do the pleading for him.

She put both hands on his shoulders and leaned forward again, rocking slowly, her breasts suspended over his torso. The pressure on his dick was intense, and he couldn't help making a little noise in response. Her breath came out in explosive little sighs, her eyes half-lidded.

"It's all for me," she said. "Right there, right where I want you."

It hadn't once occurred to him that she might be trying to get him off. But then she brought her mouth down and fastened it on his neck, and it wasn't like she was giving him a hickey, but like she was eating a hamburger.

_Meat,_ he thought, his body writhing under hers in desperation,  _I'm his meat, I'm food, he doesn't even have to try to make me that, I already am,_ and he was instantly coming in his boxers.

"Oh," he gasped, "oh, fuck, oh - I am so sorry, Allison -"

"Shhh," she said, more gently now, and smiling. She unhooked his wrists from the loops of rope, then lay down beside him and hugged him tight, ignoring his obvious embarrassment. "I think that was part of it. God, Stiles, you were so..."

She trailed off without saying what kind of  _so_  he was, and he just stayed in her arms, shaking and willing her not to leave.

"I don't want to be a werewolf," he said. "I don't want the bite. I don't."

"I don't blame you," she replied. He huddled more closely against her, holding his chafed wrists against his chest.

"In my dreams, though," he went on, more haltingly, "I - do. I do, and I - I beg for it."

"Yeah." She kissed his neck, right where she'd bitten him, and it was sore enough to make him gasp. "I can see how that might be hard to deal with. Maybe this will help, a little."

"A lot," Stiles said. He stared blankly at the wall, feeling his sticky, rapidly-cooling boxers, and the contrasting warmth of Allison's body. "Oh my god a lot."

She leaned in to kiss his mouth hard, then sat back, combing through her hair with her fingers. "I'm so glad to hear that. Stiles, this was really incredible, and I think if you can handle it, I need to go see Scott now. Like, right now."

"Yeah." He focused on her face as best as he could. "Oh - yeah?"

"Yeah." Allison looked a little apologetic. "I don't think that's exactly best practice, leaving you alone afterward, but I want to make sure he's okay too."

"No, that's really - that's fine. I'm so okay." He made a gesture that was meant to be gracious, but probably looked more like floppy birds. "Go get 'im, tiger."

"Yeah, I don't think  _he_  really wants to be my prey, you know?" Allison rolled her eyes as she stood up. "Okay. You need to eat something before bed, and stay warm, and..." She hesitated, then leaned over and kissed him again, looking into his eyes while she held his cheeks with both hands. "You were so good."

It was like an instant Stiles-puddleinator. He just smiled helplessly up at her, unable even to raise his hands to touch her. "Yeah?" he said again.

"Yes," she promised. "Really, really. Obedient is so hot, and - I couldn't have asked for anything better."

Stiles watched, speechless, as she backed out of the room and shut the door. It was easy to just lie there, feeling lightheaded and drifty and imagining what might happen next for his best friend.

"Scott's gonna get some," he sing-songed under his breath, and grinned.


End file.
